Nephilim: The Children of the Labyrinth
by Ellen Weaver
Summary: A sequel to "Labyrinth: Kingdom Come." The King and Queen of the Labyrinth have flouted Winter, and the dread King of the cold season exacts repayment in flesh. The fate of the Labyrinth, and of Sarah and Jareth's children, will be determined as the War of Seasons begins. (Rated M for fantasy violence, swashbuckling, and Dem Pants.)
1. The Fool

**Act I**

* * *

_The Nephilim were on the Earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, people of renown._ Genesis 6:4

** Chapter One: "The Fool"**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter One:**

** "So Alive"—Love and Rockets**  
** "Everything in Its Right Place"—Radiohead**

* * *

The beast snuffed the air, tracking his prey. Human. Human boy, full of meat and the savor of youth. For all its size, the beast moved quickly, silently, following the boy in the city dark. The boy had been foolish to enter his territory without any propitiatory offerings. Now he was lawful prey.

The boy obviously wanted to die; he was choosing the darkest street, the alleyways, the places where the uncertain city lights refused to penetrate. The beast felt the thrill and the glory of the slow chase under perfect conditions, as the boy turned into a dead-end alley between two locked and silent buildings. He would leap upon the boy. He would tear him apart and drink his blood, and then, belly full, he would sleep until hunger and desire drove him out to kill again. The boy would be a dainty delicacy after years of hard-spiced vagrants, and make for sweet full-bellied dreams.

The beast reached out with his claws and struck sparks from the cinderblock walls, and had to repress a chuckle as the boy peered nervously over his shoulder and stepped forward into the trap with a quicker step. The boy sensed the predator, but could not see it. The beast smiled. Fear would season the meat. This would be quick. It would be certain.

The boy stopped short, looking up at the unexpected chain-link fence blocking the alley. And then he turned and stared out into the dark with some strange emotion on his face that wasn't fear.

"I know you're there," the boy said. "Show yourself."

The predator paused, uncertain. Humans, in his experience, tried to defend themselves from fear by pretending that monsters didn't exist. This frank bravado was unusual. So the beast shook himself free of the cloaking glamour and growled, stepping out of the shadows, let the boy see.

Tall, but not tall for a man. A body made of muscle and fat and covered with patched and scabby skin, fur ripped out or fallen out from mange. Upright, now, almost a foot taller than the boy, with long, long bent-joint arms that ended in long, long fingers and claws in hands meant to snatch and grab. Yellow teeth. Pulsing red pig's eyes. The beast roared, daubing the boy with spittle. One more yard and he would be in range to grab. But slowly. He would go slowly, and enjoy the terror he inspired before he snuffed out the prey's life. Perhaps by blood loss. Perhaps by strangulation.

The boy went white and trembled, taking a step back, stopped by the rattling fence.

"Killer," the boy said. He held up his hand in a warding gesture. "Go away now, or you die."  
The beast tipped his scabby neck back and laughed. His bulk filled the alley. His back arched and he crept slowly closer, claws outstretched to tickle and snatch and rend. Those long stick-pin fingers scratched open one long tear across the boy's winter coat.

The boy screamed.

And then the beast felt a strange, new feeling. Pain. There was intense pain, in his head, in his neck. He grasped at the source of this pain and felt a length of sharp metal extruding from his neck, in a place where no metal should be. Killed. He had been killed.

"I'm sorry," he heard the voice of his murderer say, behind him. It was a warm voice, a gentle voice, even regretful. "But Bee did warn you."

The beast felt the sadness and anger of being cheated, and cried out once in outrage, blood bubbling from its impaled throat. In the next moment, the beast was dead.

The boy gasped for breath, close to hyperventilating, as the swordsman, the monster-killer, wiped his long iron blade clean on the cooling flesh of the beast. "You okay, Bee?" he asked, sheathing his sword against his hip.

"I'm fine," the boy wheezed, staring at the downed creature and bent over, putting his head between his knees.

The swordsman stepped over the beast and felt the boy over for injuries. The blond boy shoved him away. "I said I'm fine!" The swordsman gave him a penetrating glance and then turned to look at the corpse he'd made. Behind him, he heard the boy throw up.

"You should have aimed that for over here," the swordsman said. "Drop some gravy on this roast." He grinned as he heard the boy throw up again, and looked over his shoulder at him.

"Thanks _so_ much for that, Finn," the boy said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "Why do I always gotta be the bait?"

The swordsman grinned. "Because you're the pretty one." He clapped the boy on his back and wrapped his red-sleeved arm around the boy's narrow shoulders. "Come on, Bee, I'll buy you a slushie."

As they left the alley, the quiet and hungry inhuman denizens of the city crept closer to feed on the fresh meat left so tantalizingly alone. Feeling their approach, Finn led Bee quickly away, out into more well-lit and populated places, places where a dark-skinned horned man in a long red coat, and a pale blond youth with a naïve face could eat and drink and discuss urban hunting without raising any questions. The city's darkness had seen it all, but Finn didn't want Bee to see the final result of their night's work. The city was blasé; the boy was innocent.

So the eater became the eaten. Even the bones would be carried away, to be gnawed through. Even the blood would be licked clean away. It had happened before. It would happen again. Finn hummed the Doxology under his breath. World without end, city without sleep, a labyrinth of commerce and magic. Amen, amen.

"I mean it," Bee said, the cherry slushie staining his lips and tongue red. Finn knew if he were to kiss that mouth now, it would taste sugar-sweet, perhaps stain his own mouth, too. Bee licked his lips and daintily picked at the paper tray of nachos before them on the metal table. "Why do I always have to be the bait? If I'd had a sword—"

"If you had a sword, you would have gotten too close." Bee had pulled a small sketchbook from his pack and was carefully drawing a picture of the beast. The size of a calf on all fours, in shape not unlike a sloped-back hyena, or a gorilla. No fur. Finn flicked the drawing around to his perspective perused it a moment, then took Toby's pen. _Flesh Shuck_, Finn labeled the entry.

"What about a gun?"

Finn made a rude noise. "Do tell me, Bee, what is this family fetish with firearms? If you'd had a gun, you would have fired it."

"Damn right," Bee said, grabbing a particularly cheese-rich chip.

"At the creature." Finn added some notations about approximate weight and standing height.

"Duh." Bee ate, and then sucked a bit of grease from his fingertips.

"And at me. I was standing right behind it, remember." He spun Bee's notebook back to him, smiling at the youth with a fond expression.

"I wouldn't have hit you." Bee sucked at his straw.

"You could have. You think, honey-Bee, that a bullet cares where it goes?"

"And a sword does?" Bee said petulantly.

"A sword does," Finn said darkly, caressing the hilts of his weapons. "My swords care, very much, where they go."

"So let me use one," Bee insisted, slapping his cup down on the table.

"No," Finn said with finality. "I know what," he said, with sudden inspiration. "Let's go visit your sister. That'll cheer you up." _And me_, he thought. _Toby, you're adorable but it's exhausting keeping you both entertained and unhurt._ He kept the thought hidden from his face.

"You just want to see _him_," Bee said. Finn grinned. Bee's jealousy was naked and sweet. "The Goblin King."

"Your brother!" Finn cajoled, still smiling.

"Brother-in-_law_," Bee said. His red lips curled into a reluctant answering smile. "Okay. I guess."

"I thought you liked His Majesty," Finn said, finishing off the nachos and snagging Bee's unfinished drink for good measure. "Don't you like him?"

"I do," Bee sighed. "It's just sometimes… I don't like the way he looks at you. Like you're something he owns."

Finn reached out and took the boy's hand and held it gently. His golden eyes lit with an emotion somewhere between remorse and desire. "But he _does_ own me, Toby. The Goblin King owns me, body and soul."

"That's slavery," Bee said, trying to jerk his hand away, but Finn was stronger, and honed with years of practice in holding a strong grip. This was a conversation they'd had before, in bits and pieces, well-worn as a familiar piece of clothing.

"Some vows last forever," Finn said quietly. His index finger stroked gently over the boy's palm. "What's promised is promised. What's said is said." He released Bee's hand sooner than he would have liked.

"I could talk to him," Bee said. "Let him understand. It's not fair for him to—"

Finn laughed and finished off the last of the boy's sweet drink. "Fair! You know, I do believe you're the one person on Earth or Under who could say that to him and get away with it. _Fair._ Feh. Finished those nachos?" Bee nodded. "Good. We can catch the subway and be at the Goblin Market before dawn if we hurry."

"Or we could go see my parents," Bee asked reluctantly.

Finn hid a sigh. He disliked humdrum humanity, and Bee's parents were as hum as drum came. Though they'd made a certain peace with their daughter's unusual marriage to a not-quite human creature, Finn was reluctant to cause a confrontation between overprotective parents and himself. It would do no good to explain to them that the boy was of legal age and had insisted on leaving school for a semester to follow Finn about the darker corners of New York City, slicing and dicing up monsters as they went, protecting the humdrum human beings who had no idea what death they might find if they turned down the wrong street at the wrong time. Bee liked the danger, for all his complaints. Bee was a fool in the best sort of way. His own ignorance and innocence protected him from dangers psychological and physical. But still. If Bee didn't have the courage to tell Mummy and Daddy what he was up to on his sabbatical—Finn had heard him refer to it as an "urban internship" on one of Bee's weekly phone calls home—then it would hardly be fair to force Finn to disabuse them of their comforting notions.

This was the primary reason he hadn't so much as kissed the boy yet, not so much as laid a naked hand to that soft and tender open-armed flesh. Bee wanted Finn the way a cavity wanted an ache. Bee was still a child. All of these thoughts circled through his mind in a few seconds, and when he responded to Bee's suggestion, it was with no break in the conversation.

"It'll be good for you to see your parents," Finn said. "They'll be overjoyed to fuss over you. Cook you some wholesome food. Wash your undershorts."

Bee blushed. "That was just the one time!" He'd peed himself on their first hunt, when the kelpie slithered out of the Hudson and laid cold fingers on him. Tumor-ridden, hateful and hungry, it had intended to drown the boy. Finn, of course, had had other intentions, carefully realized.

"Poor kid," Finn cooed. "Yes, let's definitely take you home tonight. You need your own bed, and your own mother to tuck you in. Not bad old Finn with his monsters."

"I'm not a baby!" Bee said fiercely.

"Yes," said Finn, tenderly tucking a long wavy strand of hair behind the boy's ear. "Yes, you are."

* * *

The rattlesnap of the subway car rocked him to sleep. Falling under, falling in, he pressed his face against Finnvah's shoulder, and he felt the older man wrap his arm and the edge of his coat around him, holding him.

_I love you, Finn_, Toby thought.

He found himself dreaming of Sarah, which wasn't so strange, considering they were on their way to see her. Going to see her, and not his parents. Going to the Labyrinth, which seemed like Disneyworld compared to the wonders he'd seen in the night city with Finn, the nurseryland dangers of the strange kingdom where the Goblin King ruled.

He was dreaming a memory of his sister. His sister had been almost his first memory. If he tried hard he could recapture it. She was standing on a great height, far above him, and she opened her arms and flew. She flew to him. But that wasn't the memory he dreamed now. No. Four years ago, five. Cold winter air and the sound of Christmas music blaring tinnily out of shops and stores always made him feel this memory, even if he refused to recall any images. He remembered it all very clearly in the dream.

It was the night before Linda and Jeremy's funeral. That was what he dreamed. Dad and Mom had insisted Sarah stay at their house. And all Toby could do was see how utterly miserable Sarah looked when she thought no one could see her. Mom had mentioned in passing to Dad that it would be a good thing if Sarah could only find a way to cry. Toby didn't know if that would be a good thing or not. He just didn't want his sister to feel so sad. So he took something from his room and tiptoed through the eleven-o'clock-silent house and went to find her. He found her in the kitchen, polishing off a bottle of wine, more than half-drunk. She had given Toby a wobbly smile that faded when she saw what he carried.

"Who've you got there, Toby?" Sarah asked. And Toby pushed the stuffed bear into her arms.

"Wan Sue," Toby said gravely. "Have him. He's my best thing. I think you need him more than I do right now."

Sarah held the bear out at arm's length and stared at it. The fur was stiff from repeated washings and worn out from repeated loving, but his red ribbon was as jaunty as ever. Sarah had stared at the faded yellow teddybear and then put it to her face and sobbed violently for a full minute. The tears stopped like turning off a tap, and then she'd half-fallen off her stool and clutched Wan Sue in one arm and Toby with both.

"I can't believe this," Sarah said, looking at Wan Sue and wiping her eyes with one of Mom's just-for-important-company embroidered serviettes. She uncorked another bottle of wine and poured Toby a generous measure, and twice that again for herself.

"Mom'll have a bird if she finds out I've been drinking," Toby said carefully.

"What Karen doesn't know won't hurt her. Not unless you tell her, kid. Drink up. I have a story for you."

"What kind of story?" Toby had asked. He always liked Sarah's stories, the games she made up, the toys she played with that slowly but inevitably ended up being his toys. But something in her tone and in the general situation told Toby that this wouldn't be any fairy-tale.

"This is the story of how I gave you Wan Sue." She cuddled the slightly-damp bear against her breast. "But when he was mine, his name was 'Lancelot' and he wasn't even my best thing. This is a true story, Toby. I need you to listen. Once upon a time, when I was just about your age now, I had to baby-sit you all the time. And I was a spoiled child, and I wanted everything for myself, and I was nasty and selfish. But what no one knew was that the King of the Goblins had been watching me, and when I made a bad wish, his goblins came and took you away…"

It was the best, most frightening story Toby had ever heard. He drank robotically as Sarah fell into her narrative, dragging his imagination with her, as she described the challenge, the chase, the reversals of fortune meted out by the Labyrinth and the Goblin King, and her final confrontation with her adversary that ended in both of them being whisked away back home, safe and sound… but perhaps not unchanged. "And then I gave you Lancelot. You couldn't say his name right, but his name was your first word. 'Wan-soo-whoa.' Wan Sue. And you loved him better than I did. It was easier to let go of things I didn't need once I'd run the Labyrinth.

"Things were different after that," Sarah said, splitting the very last drops of their second bottle between Toby's glass and hers. "I was different, after that." She rested her head on her fist and smiled sadly, closing her eyes. "Now's the place where you ask me if the story's really true."

"I know it's true," Toby said. He spread Mom's fancy napkin out on the island-top like a canvas and dipping his finger in the red wine. He drew a face with the rough unthinking slashes of a Zen painting. Spiked hair, beaked nose, domineering spare mouth. He remembered, even in the dream, how easy it had been to capture that likeness, an ease that had eluded him ever since. "That's him, isn't it? That's the Goblin King."

"That's Jareth," Sarah said quietly. She ran her fingers over the stained fabric like she was touching a living face. And then she clawed the napkin into her fist as the wine-paint bled out into random patterns signifying no shape at all. She looked at Toby, and he saw that her tears were threatening again, but not for her mother. "I called for him two days ago. I wanted to wish myself away. I wanted all this to stop. But he never came. So_ I_ was wondering if it was all true." She tossed the napkin at the sink. "If he's real, he despises me."

"Why would he do that?" Toby asked. He grabbed Sarah's hand. "Why?"

"Because I'm despicable," Sarah said. She stood up on wobbly legs and handed Toby back Wan Sue. "Time for bed," she said. "Tomorrow's another terrible day."

She'd paused, swaying and slightly drunk, and looked back at him.

"It's not a story to tell Karen and Dad," she said.

"Duh," Toby said. They smiled at each other and she staggered out.

Toby didn't think Sarah ever knew that he followed just behind her as she made her way up the back stairs to the guest room, once her childhood bedroom. He'd been afraid of her falling down drunk those stairs, of dying. She'd fallen on the bed, face-first, and Toby had taken off her shoes, and tucked Wan Sue under her shoulder before he turned off her light.

The next morning, she'd stood as chief mourner at her mother's funeral, dry-eyed and straight-backed, as if none of it had happened. She didn't seem to remember their conversation at all, or at least she gave no sign.

She'd left the bear behind, propped up in his rightful place on Toby's bed.

"Wake up, Bee," Finn said quietly. "Our stop is next."

* * *

Of course, Finn had had his way, Bee groused fondly to himself as they walked up the subway steps into the Goblin Market. In the square, vendors were just setting up their wares in the gloomy day. A few greeted Finn with a friendly wave and a call of his name. A few others spat and turned away. Finn paid the latter no mind and escorted the boy through the wide plaza and into the castle proper.

Bee hadn't wanted to go home and see Mom and Dad, not at least until Thanksgiving or Christmas, when there hopefully would also be a very pregnant Sarah and the enigmatic, glittery Goblin King to keep Mom distracted. Mom's default setting was anxiety. She disapproved of Sarah's marriage on principle, because it was something she didn't understand. Similarly, Bee hadn't told his mother exactly what he was up to during his year off from college, because she wouldn't understand. Or, scratch that, she wouldn't want to understand. Magical creatures and a ghetto Harry Potter lifestyle would most certainly be on the do-not-call list for Karen Irene Williams.

"There are certain conditions I have," his father had said, a few days after the wedding party in the Labyrinth, when Bee had broached the subject of Finn's invitation to spend a year exploring New York with him, seeing all the strange and wonderful things there were to see. "First, you do this and you're doing it completely without my financial support. You're not going to spend a year living it up on your tuition money like some sort of half-assed Prodigal Son. Second, you'll call home once a week. Tuesdays at 9 PM sharp. You miss a call, and I will pull all my vast tapestry of strings to find you, since you'll be needing rescue, because there's no other reason you'd ever miss the opportunity to reassure your mother and I of your health and wellbeing. Third, if you ever need me to bail you out, literally or figuratively, your trip is over and you come home. Gratefully, quietly. Agreed?"

"Yes, sir," Toby replied, hands clenched behind his back. "That means… I can do it?"

"It means I'll talk to your mother about it and be a little vague in some of the details. But if she agrees you should be allowed to take a year off school…I don't see why you can't."

"Don't tell her about Finn," Toby said nervously. Karen still referred to her stepdaughter's husband as a 'foreign noble' whenever she was asked about her stepdaughter in polite company. Bee skewed a glance over at Finn. Definetely foreign, despite his claim to American citizenship. Definitely not human. Definitely something strange and beautiful and alien and dangerous, and definitely someone of whom Mom would not approve, especially not for her one-and-only son.

"I won't tell her about Finn," Robert had said, and given his youngest child a cagy look. "I won't tell you not to do anything illegal, but avoid needles and prostitutes and people on the make. You may wake up one day and be forty and enjoying the thought of a comfortable next forty years. Illegal activity can fuck that up for you." Toby had been rather taken aback by his father's use of profanity, but he nodded, holding the advice close. "One final thing," his father had said. "Please come home for Christmas and your birthday, Tobias. And when you see your sister, remind her to come home, too. I miss you both something terrible at the holidays."

"I will, Dad," Toby said. "I promise."

And that had been that. Bee wondered to himself, looking over at Finn again, if what they'd been doing together in the last three months qualified as illegal. He looked around at the vestibule and the corridors of the Castle at the Center of the Labyrinth, and decided there were probably ten thousand unwritten laws against it, but none written. He resisted the babyish urge to hold Finn's hand. He was nineteen, above the age of consent, but Finn always held him at a sexual distance, as if he were a child. And he wondered who'd made the unwritten law there… was it Finn? Or had his father or the Goblin King had a discreet word with Finn regarding the enforcement of Bee's increasingly chafing virginity?

The throne room was thick with goblins gamboling and singing and drinking. At the apex of all this chaos sat Jareth, the Goblin King, lounging on his throne and occasionally snapping off Polaroid pictures with a benevolent look on his strange face. The goblins grew quiet in a breaking wave as Bee and Finnvah came forward, but Jareth made no sign that he saw them until they were standing at the lip of the recessed pit before the throne. He raised the camera and took their picture with a flash that momentarily blinded Bee.

"Your Majesty," said Finn, executing a complicated bow that was somewhere between a gesture of worship and a curtsey. Bee looked sideways at Finn and knew those graceful calisthenics were beyond his ability, and instead bowed awkwardly at the waist.

"Such ceremony," Jareth said, smiling, straightening on his throne and flapping the ejected photo between his fingers. "I'm not holding court today. No need for formalities, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix." His tone was reassuring, but Bee had the feeling that despite what the Goblin King said, he would have been angrily disappointed if Finn hadn't made the proper gesture of humility. "And you need never bow to me, Toby. Unless you're interested in swearing fealty to me?" His smile became if anything slightly pointed and predatory. Toby knew he should have felt uneasy, but didn't. He liked Jareth, for all his weirdness. Slowly the goblins began to sing and swear and shuffle around again, endlessly distracted and distracting, and the throne room returned to its customary social chaos.

"We came to see Sarah," Finn said cheerfully. "It's not an official visit."

"But you have things to tell me, nevertheless. We must talk," the Goblin King said, kicking his feet up in the air and getting up from his throne with a bounce. He traversed the perimeter of the pit, benevolently kicking a few slow goblins out of his way, and stood before them. Even down off the raised dais, he seemed to loom over Finn like a thunderhead. _Heels_, Bee thought, observing the Goblin King's boots. _He wears heels. He's not really that tall_. But it was more than the lift of his shoes that made Finn look at the Goblin King with admiration and subservient desire. Bee's eyes skittered away from the Goblin King's obscenely tight pants. "Here you go," Jareth said, pushing the dim picture into Bee's hands, who took it with surprise. Jareth came between them, hooked them both by the elbows and strolled them out into the corridors as the goblin chaos continued on unabated.

"Where is Sarah?" Finn asked. Bee tried to peep around the Goblin King's narrow chest to look at him, but they were all walking too quickly to make the attempt.

"My lady wife is sleeping in. Sleeping into what I'm not particularly sure. Perhaps a melon of some kind, or a second moon." Jareth halted before a massive pair of doors and dropped Finn's arm. "In there."

"You aren't coming in with me?"

"What, and wake that dragon? I think not, noble knight. You do it." Jareth laughed an insane laugh and pushed Finn at the doors.

"I thought you said we were going to talk!" Finn said, as Jareth dragged Toby with him down one of the endless corridors of the castle.

"We will. Later! Come, young Toby!" Bee felt uneasy. He didn't particularly want to be separated from Finn, but it seemed a much better option than being sent in to visit his cranky, pregnant sister while Jareth and Finn engaged in the type of courtly, flirtatious dialog and insider's language that had been the hallmark of their last visit.

Bee was very conscious of being travel-stained and unbathed and tatter-clothed and smelly and itchy, linked arm-in-arm with Jareth, who seemed to be perpetually well-dressed, clean, and comfortable no matter what mess he surrounded himself with. _No wonder Finn likes him so much_, he thought. _They're_ _just alike_. _I wish I was like them_.

"You are, you know," Jareth said, as they rounded a bend and tripped quickly up some steps. They curved up and up; they were climbing a tower.

"I'm what now?" Bee asked, wanting some clarity.

"Important to him." The Goblin King stropped at the top of the stairs; they were in a faceted glass dome that had already absorbed some of the the heat of the day. The tower room was sparsely furnished with a tatty old armchair and a rickety endtable; it smelled of stale cigarettes. Jareth cranked open a window and stared out, then pulled back the tattered cuffs of his left sleeve and looked at his watch. The room cooled quickly as November air spilled in.

"How do you know?" Bee asked. "I feel like a lucky rabbit's foot, that's how important I feel. So how do you know?"

Jareth tilted his head and stared down at Toby's hand. "Because it's something I can see."

Bee looked down and saw he was still clutching the underdeveloped picture. His thumb had smudged a deep yellow mark on one corner, but it was still clear despite that flaw. There he was, in the picture, looking babyish and worried and tired and dirty. In the picture, his eyes refused to look the taker in the face. Bee frowned, expecting Finn's eyes to have met Jareth's, to be boldly looking forward. But instead Finn's golden eyes were glancing at Bee, with a look of desire and pride so intense it took his breath away. He blushed and clutched the picture tighter. He looked up at Jareth, expecting to feel more embarrassed, more exposed. But the Goblin King was carefully neutral, even kindly distant.

_He's not going to judge me_, Bee realized gladly. He found it easier to breathe, like an extra weight had been lifted from his backpack. He slipped the picture into his pocket, next to his phone.

Jareth opened the drawer of the table and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, an ashtray, an Altoids tin, and a lighter. "Don't tell Sarah," he said, lighting one up in clenched teeth. "She'll be jealous." Jareth blew smoke out the window, and followed it with his eyes. He looked at his watch again.

"What're you looking at?" Bee asked, coming up beside Jareth and staring out. He couldn't see anything unique, just the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth was pretty impressive, Bee had to admit, but there wasn't anything particularly unusual going on. At least not that he could see. The Goblin City looked like a doll's village, and there was a parkland beyond that, all gold and red leaves, and beyond that a series of interlocking indeterminate maze-walls that seemed to extend to the stormy-looking horizon. Bee casually reached for Jareth's cigarettes, intending to smoke one, but Jareth slapped his hand without looking.

"I'm checking the time," Jareth said. "What time do you have, young Toby?"

Bee reached into his pocket resentfully and dramatically with his unslapped hand and pulled out his phone. Zero bars, which wasn't surprising, but the time read 10 AM sharp. "Ten," he said.

"New York time? I wonder," Jareth said. "Cold in your city, Toby?"

"At night, yeah," Bee said. He blushed to think. It had snowed in mid-October, and he and Finn had made their makeshift beds over a subway exhaust grate that gave out intermittent heat which only made him feel the cold more strongly. Finn had called him into his sleeping bag, first offering and then demanding that the boy come in beside him, stop being foolish, human beings freeze to death all the time in this city. And Bee had, resisting only because he wanted to be close to Finn so badly. Warmed by Finn's body under the warmth of his coat and their trash-bedding, it had been a species of Heaven, but he had been ashamed at how obviously aroused he was. "No matter, no mind," Finn had said, tucking his leg over Toby's thighs like a mother cat. "Just get warm and sleep." And Bee had, but Finn, most likely, had not, keeping watch over his flock of one by night. "It gets cold. Rain. Snow."

"And the leaves in the Central Park, they're no longer green?"

"What are you getting at?" Bee asked. He looked up at Jareth, worried by his worry.

Jareth stubbed his cigarette out and took a mint, and offered the box to Bee.

"Winter is coming to the Labyrinth. That's the long and short of it." Rain began to spit out of the grey sky, cold rain with a hint of snow to it. Jareth looked out the window one more time and cranked it shut. "A change in the air," he said, brooding.

"I get that it's a problem, but I don't understand how," Bee said.

"Your coat is torn quite badly," Jareth remarked conversationally, putting his smoking accessories away. "Would you like it mended, or would you like a new coat?"

"I'd like a new everything," Bee said, "And a hot shower on top of that. So why is Winter a problem?" he asked, insistent.

"Because it's something I can't see," Jareth said. His black eye and his blue one were lit with some nameless anxiety. "Because it's _never happened before_."

* * *

**Next… Chapter Two: "The Empress"**

* * *

_**Author's Note:** This story is a sequel to my novella "Labyrinth: Kingdom Come." Although I'm going to do my best to ensure that new readers can understand this story, there are several key original characters, such as Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix and John Company, who've been introduced to readers in that first story. "Kingdom Come" also discloses how Jareth and Sarah arrived at their unusual marriage. These events begin approximately three months after the conclusion of "Kingdom Come." _

_I'm really excited about this story. There will be twists and turns and surprises-for you, and for me too. I've got Frances Osgood riding beta shotgun on this one. If there are spelling or continuity or reference errors, I assure you the fault is mine._

Time now for a special dedication to **Jade Cooper**, who did the phenomenal cover art for "Kingdom Come," and specially requested a story with Finn and Toby in it.  


_As with "Kingdom Come," I've got a thematic soundtrack for this story. Please feel free to download and enjoy the music that goes with each chapter. -E.W._


	2. The Empress

**Chapter Two: The Empress**

* * *

** Soundtrack for Chapter Two:**

** "What I Am"—Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians **  
** "November Rain"—Guns N' Roses  
"Heat"****—**David Bowie  


* * *

"Announce thyself, varlet!" barked a familiar voice as Finn entered the antechamber to the Queen's apartments, and he felt a knobbed staff poke threateningly into his ribs. "None may pass without my permission!"

"Sir Didymus!" Finn said with genuine delight. "It's me!"

Didymus lowered his staff carefully, tilting his head to stare at Finn with his one good eye, brows lowered in concentration. "Ah, yes. Sir… I can't quite place the name." He clipped his weapon back to his baldric, livery now green and gold with a golden key embroidered over a peach, Sarah's coat of arms.

"You don't remember me?" Finnvah said, so disappointed that the reproach came out before he could stop himself. The little knight's loyal steed, the sheepdog Ambrosius, remembered Finn better, jumping up and pressing his paws against Finn's chest and giving a low, delighted woof. Finn ruffled Ambrosius's ears before stepping back and getting on one knee to talk to Sir Didymus. "Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix? I was seven years your faithful companion. You remember how we pushed back the great Night Troll incursion into the Goblin Market?"

"Sir Finnvarrah!" Didymus exclaimed, eye lighting with recognition. "Of course, of course. The dim lighting plays havoc with the eyesight." Ambrosius pressed against Finn's side, and he patted the dog.

"You've come up in the world, Sir Didymus," Finn said respectfully. "My compliments."

"It is an honor to serve. Truly, Queen Sarah is the most gracious and noble lady who has ever drawn breath."

"She would have to be, to have the valiant Sir Didymus as her personal guard. May I have your permission to see her?" First seeing him, Finn's plan had been to pump his sometime brother-in-arms for information regarding Sarah's health and wellbeing. But Sir Didymus, who in their early days together had suffered the occasional lapse in memory, seemed to be growing increasingly senile. _Fortunately_, Finn thought, unconsciously rubbing his ribs where the little knight had bruised him, _he's still strong in body_. But Sir Didymus might not be the most reliable source of information about the Queen. Ambrosius might be more helpful, but Finn didn't speak dog.

"Enter my Lady's private chambers?" The little knight looked slightly outraged.

"On the command of His Majesty," Finn said firmly. It wasn't even a lie. "May I have your permission?"

Sir Didymus gave him a fierce look. "You must swear to treat her as the apple of your eye, precious and fragile." Finn repressed a snort. Sarah Williams might be many things, but fragile she was not. But then, Sir Didymus always did have a blind spot for the less-than-gentle attributes of the gentle sex.

"I do so swear, Sir Didymus."

The little knight gave him an evaluating look. _Senile doesn't mean stupid_, Finn remembered, and wondered if his vagabond lifestyle had hurt the impression he liked to make. He stood proudly up.

"Yes, you may have my permission. Only you mustn't wake her if she sleeps. Their Majesties have been very clear on this point. Her delicate condition..." Sir Didymus, if he could have blushed, would have been blushing. "Ahem. Enter." The little knight reached up and pulled back the great door for Finn, who felt some pride in being found worthy. _Ah, Sir Didymus_, Finn thought. _How terrible it must be, growing old. How can anyone stand it?_

But all other thoughts left his head as the door closed behind him and he saw the queen.

Sleeping under satin bedclothes under a canopy of gauze and silver stars, Sarah Williams looked every bit a fairy-tale princess, waiting for the handsome prince to come and kiss her awake. Finn approached her diffidently, circling around the perimeter of the room. Her dark hair was spread thick as jam over her pillows. The down coverlet and sheets had been pressed down to her hips, and the thin cotton nightgown she wore couldn't conceal the rounded dome of her pregnant belly, or the pink blush of her breast-tips.

Finn felt shaken by her loveliness, and rejoiced in her tranquility. In all senses but one, he felt himself swell with love at the sight of her, and all that she represented. _I thank you, god, whatever god ordained this, that she is._ He kept his breath quiet and his footsteps quieter as he approached, remembering Sir Didymus' instructions.

The fairy-tale illusion was shattered when she turned on her side and broke wind. Finn pressed his fist to his mouth but couldn't keep his outraged laughter in. She opened one thick-lashed eye and glared at him. "What did you _eat_? The Bog of Stench?" Finn asked, coughing the words out between hysterical whoops of laughter.

"You'd better hope I'm still dreaming," Sarah said serenely, voice full of loving fondness. "Because I'm going to murder you for waking me up." She threw a pillow at him with deadly aim from prone position.

"I didn't wake you up. _You_ woke you up, Tooting Beauty!" He tossed the pillow back at her and dissolved into giggles. He had to bend over and rest his hands on his thighs to catch his breath.

"It wasn't me, it was Yimmil," Sarah said, yawning and sitting up.

"No-Sir-Lord!" piped up a familiar voice, its owner excavating himself from the bedclothes. It was the little goblin. Sarah made a face as she helped him, folding the satin comforter back, dislodging a few books in the process. A Chirurgeon's Compendium of the Functions of Women. What to Expect When You're Expecting. Yimmil bounded forward, radiating stink-lines.

"I miss you, and then I remember your skills at diplomacy," Sarah said, languidly stretching. "Is this any way to greet a Queen? Bursting into her chamber while she sleeps and making loud noises?"

"Yeah!" Yimmil agreed, as if he weren't the maker of loud and rude noises, moving over to the cavernous fireplace and moving a kettle onto the hob.

"Gracious madam, no. My sincere apologies." Finnvah sobered and performed the complicated bow given to nobility in their own domains. It required quite a lot of gluteal fortitude, but Sarah only looked him over with satisfaction as she slithered off the bed and wrapped herself in a green dressing-gown. Her round little belly peeped out through the folds like an egg in grass. When he felt he'd bowed long enough, he attempted to rise, but Sarah's expression turned to irritation. "Not yet," she said wickedly, moving over to the grate and settling herself comfortably down. "You stay just where you are for the moment." Yimmil brought her a mug of tea and a doll's cup for himself, and sat on the ottoman between Sarah's feet. They sipped at the same time, giving Finnvah identical looks of gleeful opprobrium.

Finnvah gritted his teeth, hoping his endurance was stronger than Sarah's patience. It wasn't a near thing, but she had had finished her tea before she allowed him to stand. Sarah held out her mug. "Arise, and fill this cup for me, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. And top off Yimmil's too. And then you can have some for yourself and talk with me."

"Us!" declared the little goblin, scratching at his furry ear.

"Us," Sarah said fondly to the goblin. "Unless you'd prefer to go get breakfast." Yimmil shoved his teacup at Finnvah.

"Breakfast, Yes-Ma'am-Lady! For you too. I get!" Yimmil left through a goblin-sized judas gate in the doors.

"The Goblin King lets goblins into his bedchamber?" Finnvah asked, as he refilled Sarah's mug. There was only one other cup available on the mantel, incongruously banal against the marble carvings of shela-ne-gigs and green-men. Yellow with red letters: "BIG BAD DADDY." Obviously Jareth's mug, but seldom used. Finn blew a thin film of glittery dust out of it and poured himself a hot drink.

"The Goblin King does whatever his queen asks," Sarah replied smoothly. She gave him a small and personal smile. "He's spoiling me rotten. He gives me anything I want." She put down her mug and squirmed against her chair. Finnvah reached over and adjusted the pillow at her back. _And no wonder_, Finn thought. _You've given _him_ more than he ever hoped to ask for._ Sarah leaned back and sighed with comfort. He took note of her skin and her nails, her hair, her flesh. She glowed with life and health, and the smug satisfaction of a woman who knows herself to be truly beautiful.

Sarah interrupted his train of thought. "Where's my brother, Finnvah? You promised to keep him safe. Why isn't he with you?"

"I left him in the rather capable hands of his brother-in-law," Finn replied. He unbuckled his sword-belt and hung it over the second chair, and sat in it, sipping his tea. "You look marvelous, Queen Sarah. It does my eyes good to drink you in."

"Fresh," Sarah said, batting Finn's feet with hers. "Don't change the subject."

"Which subject was that, Your Radiance? The gloriousness of your beauty, like May-Day in November? The green of spring in your eyes? Your belly, a ship that sails stately over dry land? Verily, even trumpets announce your presence—"

"The king delivers whatever his queen asks, and that includes your head on a platter, No-Sir-Lord. Or your dick in a box." Sarah's grin became wicked. "I'm only half kidding. I wanted to see you so bad yesterday, and today like some sort of wish-come-true, here you both are. Is Toby well? Unhurt? …Untouched?"

"Yes, yes, and literally no but figuratively yes," Finnvah replied. He eyed his tea speculatively. Uncaffeinated. He might as well be drinking hot water. He sneered down his mug. "But that last's getting harder to handle, pardon the phrasing."

"He's a child," Sarah said, like a whipcrack. "You're old enough to be his father. You should be able to manage just fine."

"Frankly, Queen Sarah, I'd rather face down another knucklavee with nothing but a garden hose than head Bee off anymore. Hell might have no fury like a woman scorned, but Earth knows no desire like a teenage boy who wants to fuck. It's not…"

"Were you about to say 'fair' to me?" Sarah said with dangerous sweetness.

Finn sighed. "Touché. But I was going to say 'fair to Bee.'"

"He's not ready," Sarah said. "He's not old enough."

"I haven't so much as kissed him, though he is incredibly kissable," Finn said, "My hand to Dog, though I wish you'd change your mind. Speaking of mood swings and abruptly changing the subject, how are you feeling?"

"I should feel tired, but I'm not. I feel… full. Like… I'm running a race and winning. But… it's definitely hard work," Sarah admitted. "Harder than I thought it would be. And my moods are all over the place. The goblins are terrified of me. I think Jareth is, too." Finn stood up and refilled her mug with the last of the kettle. "I'm sorry I made you bow so long. I was mad that Toby didn't come to see me right away and I took it out on you." She sipped her tea gratefully and Finn shrugged. "No, it's like that," Sarah said, frowning. "I can see how utterly insane I am, and know I'm acting like a crazy person, but it's like I can't stop myself. I've got no self-control. And I'm crackling with power. I feel like I should be on fire. Like I could do anything. Anything at all. Except…"

He squatted down by Sarah's chair and looked up at her face. "Except what? What can I do for you, Queen Sarah? Anything on Earth or Under."

"I need an OB-GYN," Sarah said flatly. "I want someone who knows what they're doing and who's done it before to deliver this baby."

"Oh?" Finn asked, nonplussed. "I can help with that."

Sarah looked momentarily horrified. "You don't mean you—"

"I don't know nothin' about birthin' no babies, Miz Scarlett," Finn replied. "But I know people who know people who do." He remembered the books, and realized they'd come from the Goblin King's side of the bed, and he felt a stab of horror. "Gog-Magog, has your husband been intending to deliver the child himself? Or get some halfassed goblin quack to lend an assist?"

"I think the goblins reproduce by budding," Sarah said wearily. "And every time the word 'doctor' gets brought up, Jareth looks like somebody pinched his tenders, so I stopped asking. I haven't been back upstairs-sideways-Earthside since August. But even that wouldn't help, not a normal doctor anyway. This baby isn't human. I can tell. I feel good, but strange, and I want professional help and I don't know how to tell Jareth I'm scared." Her belly visibly jumped from a kick, and then another. Sarah rubbed her bump, wedding-ring glinting on her finger. "Shush now," she told it. "Breakfast is on the way."

"There is one obvious solution," Finn said cautiously, looking up at Sarah.

"No," Sarah said passionlessly. "Don't even suggest it. This baby isn't something that was forced on me. It was something I chose. I bought Jareth's life with hers. Or his. A life for a life. That's fair. That's just." She looked at Finnvah, full of worry. "I just need some help. I just need a contingency plan if and when everything goes to Hell."

_She's lived full-time in the Labyrinth for almost half a year,_ Finnvah thought to himself_. All sorts of strange and loving people, but no human faces. Come to think of it, no female faces. It's definitely a sausage-party here, especially in the castle. I wonder if that's part of the problem, too. A woman needs another woman at a time like this, I suppose. _Finn tried to remember everything he knew about women and drew up a picture of Sarah and a gigantic question mark. _If I were in her position, I'd want some more women around, particularly women who knew about giving birth. It can be fatal. I should have thought of this before. His Majesty should have thought of this before. But then, when was the last time he had contact with a pregnant woman?_ His cheeks drained of blood.

"I'll go right now," Finn said, standing up and buckling his swords back at his hips.

"I don't want you to go now!" Sarah shrieked. "You just got here!" She leaned back in her chair, exhausted. "Sorry. That was the hormones." She put her face in her hands. "I've missed you," she explained. "I'll enjoy the visit more knowing you're going to find me someone. Please stay. How long can you stay?"

Finn looked at her with only a little bit of pity and dose of generosity. "We can stay as long as you like," he said soothingly. "Until you're sick of looking at us, we can stay." He smiled at her.

There was a knock at the door. Finnvah opened it for Yimmil, who was laboring under a covered salver as wide as a cart-wheel. Sir Didymus and Ambrosius followed.

"Breakfast, Yes-Ma'am-Lady!" Yimmil shouted. He humped the huge platter indelicately atop a low table. The cover came off with a puff of bacon-scented steam. Eggs, pork products, grits, scones, balls of fruit in separate ice-nestled dishes, juices and sherberts, potatoes, clotted cream, toast and marmalade were packed together in glorious display.

"Ooooh," all of them said, worshipping the feast.

"Sweet Betty Sunshine!" Finn said. "Now that's what I call a breakfast." They descended on the food like locusts on wheat.

* * *

"The thing to understand about the Labyrinth," Jareth said, as he led Bee through the Goblin Market, "is that it is, in some sense, alive. Just as I am." The crowd at the market parted before them, some bowing low in the way Finn did, and various others bringing the best samples of their wares to Jareth's attention. There were all sorts of people—goblins, dwarves, tall veiled figures with delicate wrists which pointed at what they wished to acquire. It was a little like a scene out of one of the Godfather movies, only none of the people were human, and Jareth's long coat was black and he wore his sigil-necklace instead of a flower in his lapel. Very soon he looked like a peddler at a country fair, his pockets full of "taters and funyuns" and shoulders and sleeves pinned with brooches and earrings and posies and ribbons.

"You're only alive in some sense?" Bee grinned impudently at the Goblin King.

"How much have your sister and your travelling companion told you about me?" Jareth asked, pausing in front of a mirror at a secondhand clothes stall to preen and rearrange some of his coat-décor. He tightened his gloves over his fingers and admired himself, striking a pose. "Not much," Toby admitted, and Jareth's face fell.

"Not much?" he said, clearly disappointed.

"I mean," Bee said, attempting some retroactive diplomacy, "They seem to respect your privacy. I know you're not human and I know there are a lot more weird magical people hanging around the world than anybody but my sister probably ever notices. You're the King of the Labyrinth, and it's a magic kingdom that's sort of adjacent to the real world."

"Adjacent' is a more appropriate word for it than you know. The best preposition until recently would have been 'under.' Underworld, underearth, underground." Jareth paused to look over an ancient wooden merry-go-round being turned by harnessed ostriches. The painted horses spun very fast; those bustards were kicking up a full head of steam and the goblin riders were shrieking with joy. "You see the axis, where this wheel turns?" Jareth asked.

"Yes," said Toby, looking carefully and finding the thick metal spool at the center, oozing axle grease.

"The Labyrinth is like that contraption. The inhabitants are the riders. And I am that rather solid and necessary axis. The _axis mundi_." He gave a raucous laugh that harmonized with the goblins' screams of pleasure. "Now, let's say the axis were moved. Just very slightly moved, off its base. Not completely off. What would happen?"

"It wouldn't be as easy to turn. It might even break," Toby suggested. "So what does the merry-go-round have to do with Winter?" Bee asked. "And why does it have you so worried?"

"Don't rush me!" Jareth said. "I've given you all the pieces you need to figure out my point anyway." Jareth was investigating a tennis racket, plucking at the catgut as if it were a guitar. He laid it down among the higgle-piggle of ancient sports equipment at that particular stall, disappointed with its soundlessness.

"It's hard to think on an empty stomach," Toby hinted.

"Oh. Oh! That's right. Food." He said it with disdain but meandered Bee aside the market and over to a fenced-in beer hall, "The Swishy Fish," according to the sign and the lipstick on the trout. "Breakfast for the boy, please, and two pints." The diminutive proprietor almost fell over himself in a hurry to get the order in, bowing all the while.

"Aren't you going to eat anything?" Bee asked, as he tucked into an insane-looking but tasty traditional English breakfast. The kippers' mouths had been rouged and their eye-sockets filled with googly-eyes. Jareth titled his chair back and watched the throng at commerce and popped his coat collar against the chill and damp.

"I have a complicated relationship with food, but if you like, the four of us can take dinner together tonight." Bee grunted in the affirmative around a mouthful of beans and washed them down with the beer. It felt strange to shovel down all this food while the Goblin King ate nothing, and only toyed with drinking. But a few months living rough in the streets had taught him the value of wasting no time with a hot meal on someone else's dime. Compared to lukewarm containers deli meals scavenged from dumpsters, or the even more rare pleasures of quickie-mart nachos and chili-dogs and slushies, this breakfast was a feast.

"At its heart, what is the difference between the merry-go-round and the axis on which it turns?" Jareth asked. His eyes were still on the spinning red-striped top of the market's carousel.

"Elaboration," Bee said, swallowing before speaking. "The same thing, only bigger."

"And the difference between myself and the Labyrinth is therefore also a matter of elaboration. I've changed. Your sister has changed me. And the Labyrinth is also therefore… changed. It's off-kilter. It's becoming… real and mortal in a way it never was before. I'm naturally concerned." Jareth's voice grew slightly dark and he plucked a crystal out of the air and passed it over and over his palm and knuckles.

"The merry-go-round goes round, but it doesn't go anywhere else," Bee suggested. "You can't get anywhere on it that you haven't been a minute ago."

Jareth's scowl lightened. "There is that." He caught up the whirling bauble in his gloved fingertips and stared through it into the market. "That _does_ seem true. My kingdom does appear to be moving somewhere. Perhaps that's good, but I need to make preparations. If there's a disaster, nobody here, not the goblins, or the trees, or the fairies, or boggarts or bears or fieries or fauns or any other creature that lives here has any other place to call home."

"Well," Bee said, mopping up his bean-juice with the last of his toast, "If you can live with the changes, I bet everyone else can. My dad says a garden is better than a flower-shop anyway." Bee finished his beer and Jareth clutched the crystal so tightly it seemed to smush down into nothingness in his palm. The Goblin King effusively thanked the proprietor for the food while the latter refused even the mention of payment. They went back into the swirl of the Goblin Market.

"So how can I help?" Bee asked. "Help put the garden to bed for the winter?"

"There's a good lad," Jareth smiled. He paused at a stall full of pet shop junk and took two birdcages off the hands of the proprietress and gave them to Toby. "There are quite a few people I need to talk to today, and collecting the stupid and flittery populations is time-consuming." He stood in front of Toby, blocking his view, eating up all the attention in the peculiar way he had. When he stepped away, the Goblin Market was gone and Jareth and Bee were alone outside the very gates of the Labyrinth, in the blink of an eye. Snow was falling in gentle spits from the dark sky.

"Wow," Bee said, incredibly impressed. "Can you teach me how to do that?"

"Yes. When you can hold your right elbow in your right hand, I'll teach you."

Bee looked around at the clusters of wilting white flowers climbing the walls, and the sluggish fairies fluttering to them, sipping at the nectar. "Those the ones you want?"

"Those are the ones," Jareth said grimly.

"They don't look so tough," Toby said.

"They're tougher than you think," Jareth warned. "Let's see if we can't find you some tools." He walked over to a little cottage snuggled up close to the walls, the size of a child's playhouse. A garden of flowers and vegetables had all gone to untended ruin, and he crushed the dying plants under his boots. Jareth threw open the door of the cottage and ducked low to enter. Toby put down the cages and followed.

"Whose house is this?" Bee asked. The whole cottage looked like it had been abandoned for months. The bed was neatly made, but a chest of drawers stood open and empty, and it felt strangely emptied of purpose, like all personal items had been stripped.

"That miserable dwarf," Jareth said, not quite in answer to Toby. He reached out over a weentsy wooden table and picking up a gilt-edged envelope. Toby recognized it as one of the invitations for the wedding party last August. "He never even bothered to say good-bye to Sarah, or take his formal leave of me. I tell you now, young Toby, never trust a beardless dwarf or a bald lion. Wretched creatures." He dropped the unopened invitation and exited in a huff. Outside on the back wall of the cottage were a series of gardening implements. Jareth handed down a heavy brass sprayer to Bee. "This will stun them."

Bee nodded.

"Stuff these cages as full as you can, and I'll be back to pick you up in time for dinner."

"But—" Toby thought to protest being left out here alone all day, but buttoned his lip. He _had_ offered to help, after all. "Okay."

Jareth rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a potato and an onion and a shiny green apple and laid them on the lip of a small green pool by a water-pump. "If you get hungry before I fetch you, there's that. If the weather gets worse, take shelter in the cottage. Bring the fairies inside with you. Oh, and Toby?"

"Yeah?"

"Be careful. They bite!" Jareth laughed like this was a joke as he faded from sight.

* * *

Under the world, under the earth, underground, there was a further depth and a depth below that. And under the mountain underground, there was a place set aside where kings might speak to each other, on the border where their realms sometimes touched, where the prisoners they held in check together between the worlds were watched. The Observatory. Sarah had come here once, to face the dire King Over the World, to find answers about Jareth's disappearance. And she had tricked the tricky fairy king here, sealing him away from the Labyrinth, locking him into one of the cages the King Over the World, the King of Winter, had meant for others.

_I should have bent the knee to Sarah and begged for her help at the beginning. I should have never let the King Over the World so much as see her face_, Jareth thought to himself. _But I was angry, and a liar, and bent on having my own way. Her will was stronger than his, and her courage greater than mine. Now we'll see what we will see. And kings will speak together as brothers, and he will yield to my demands. It's not too late to turn Winter out of my Labyrinth._

Jareth _observed_.

All was silent and dark as a tomb. He raised his hand and summoned a crystal, lit inside with bright fire. The walls flickered with reflected light. He made his way down into the silent space to where locks held prisoners tight.

All the doors stood open.

"John Company," Jareth whispered to the empty space. "King of Winter. What have you _done_?"

* * *

** Next… Chapter Three: "The Lovers"**

* * *

_**A/N:** There's a nice stinger for the close of this chapter. Many thanks to my beta, FrancesOsgood, for feedback and assist with the usual grammar and spelling bits, but also for helping with the construction of the plot. "Plot?" you ask, true believers? "It's not going to be romance and sex and babytimes fluff from beginning to end?" D'accord, there will be all that good stuff, but with plot too. We've already begun. Special prize to the reviewer who figures out how the King of Winter got out with all the prisoners in tow. Double prizes to those who guess where John Company and Co. have gone._

_ Chapter titles are taken from the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck. Just FYI, If you want to look up the symbolic meaning attached to the applicable card._

If you're enjoying this story, would you please take a breath and write a review?

* * *

**Fanny**: But you KNOW. :D  
**Kwizzle**: Ain't Toby-in-love GREAT?  
**Jetredgirl**: Buckle up. It's going to be a (baby) bumpy ride.  
**Panda**: If there's an accident, Toby will have a new entry for dead things starting with "F."  
**J Luc Pitard**: Toby's definitely a major POV character. It's fun.  
**irgroomer**: 'Ello! I'm so psyched to write it!  
**Jalen Strix**: House Stark comes a little closer to the mark than I'd like to discuss. There may indeed be a Crimson Nuptials moment sometime in the near future.  
**Galileo**: Welcome! Here you go, poppin'-fresh chapter ready to read.


	3. The Lovers

**Chapter Three: The Lovers  
**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter Three:**

**"We Share Our Mother's Health"—The Knife**  
**"Neuköln"—David Bowie and Brian Eno**  
**"Poison"—Alice Cooper**

* * *

**_Author's Note:_**_ The end of this chapter contains allusions to consensual adult sexual behavior. Reader discretion is advised._

* * *

Sarah Williams sat at the table and watched the men do battle with their full plates. Finnvah skipped from one dish to another, sampling everything and moving to the next challenge while keeping up a steady stream of humorous banter. Toby kept an ear open to the conversation but ate through his food like a tank rolling over everything in his path. And then there was Jareth, who treated meals in company like a sniper in hostile territory, swallowing quick bites when no one was looking, a shadow on the field.

_I'm the nuclear option_, Sarah smiled grimly, realizing she was on seconds already_. Just blowing it away and leaving nothing behind_. She was hungry all the time now, and she gave Egg a rundown on every bite she took, how it tasted, how it nourished, apologizing for the spicy peppers and the pickled garlic in advance, but answering the cravings. She was getting plump. She was going to be huge. Great with Egg. She handed a ripe apple over to Jareth, who sliced it for her, carefully ate one of the pieces under her supervision, and handed over the rest. He returned her smile with a look that said, "So there." It reassured her to see him eat. She reached over the tablecloth and took his hand in hers, giving him a strong grip that he returned.

Jareth was the master of reassuring her, and she hadn't expected to enjoy being so completely coddled. He anticipated her desires as if she were a book he had memorized. And what Jareth didn't know about her or her needs—and Sarah was always surprised to discover what strange and eclectic directions Jareth's store of knowledge took and the odd places it dead-ended—he always attempted to learn. Two weeks ago he had been confused and disturbed when he came to collect her for their morning walk and found her sitting on their bed in hysterics, holding her jeans in her hands.

"They don't fit anymore!" she had yelled, and buried her face in the denim and sobbed.

"Yes, well, you've gotten very much rounder since yesterday," he'd replied logically.

"But these are my favorite jeans!" she'd said, hiccupping through her tears, as if that explained absolutely everything. "And I'm just going to get fatter and fatter!"

"Yes?" he'd said. "I'd thought that was rather the idea." He'd kissed her cheek, and she had been momentarily pacified until he'd made the dire mistake of murmuring "My plump little hen," in her ear in seductive tones.

Sarah had shrieked in outrage and come close to losing her senses in her desire to murder him. Disaster had been averted when he'd apologized and asked what he ought to do for her.

"I need maternity clothes," she said, sad and horrified at the idea of muumuus and pants with stretch panels. But Jareth had been delighted with the idea. He'd gathered a long length of green ribbon and used it to measure her for pretty dresses, full of "froo," ones that he intended to make himself. Every place a particular swell of her body met the edge of the ribbon, he tied a knot to mark the measurement.

Her wardrobe soon hung with a rainbow palette of the sort of fairy-tale frocks she'd dreamed of as a child. Better than her dreams, because they weren't just pretty, they were comfortable and high-waisted and well-hemmed and could be accessorized with the showers of jewels he'd threatened her with during their courtship. Sarah preferred to wear no extra adornment than her wedding-ring and the brass key, her sigil, around her neck. It gave him pleasure to dress her, to feed her, to look at her, and although Sarah was uneasy with the idea of being ornamental, she had to admit that turnabout was fair play. She admired Jareth often enough, it was true.

The measurements of her swelling Egg were carefully and solemnly done every morning now before she dressed. The knots came centimeters apart on the length of the ribbon, and then inches, and Jareth kissed her on her navel, which was slowly developing from an innie to an outie. _Like a turkey thermometer_, Sarah thought ruefully. _I'll pop when I'm done cooking_. She patted Egg, feeling content and well-cared-for, and pleasantly useless. Things might become more complicated later, but at this moment, everything seemed perfect.

Finvah poured them all some of the chewy redcurrant wine, making sure Sarah's was well-diluted with seltzer. She couldn't, and wouldn't, take anything stronger, and she evaluated Finnvah carefully as he poured a like measure for Toby, though her brother didn't notice.

_He's very attentive_, Sarah thought. _And Toby… Toby loves him.  
_  
There had been a throng of goblins dancing attendance on them at the beginning of the meal, and when one of them was in danger of becoming too rambunctious, Jareth had sent him on an errand for outré tableware or improbable-sounding side dishes. Most never returned from these petty quests, and by the time they were negotiating the meal's unconditional surrender in the form of a smashed Pavlova, the four of them were alone.

Toby had brought his sketchbook to dinner, and was showing it to Jareth. Jareth was interested, nay, fascinated by Toby's drawings, far more interested than he appeared to be in dessert, asking questions about the creatures detailed there, what methods had been used to track and corner them. Finn occasionally interjected with color commentary on the fights in question, hanging closely by Toby's side, even daring to wrap an arm around the younger boy's shoulders. Sarah pillaged the Pavlova while the other conquering generals were otherwise occupied.

"It's not exactly safe, though, is it?" Sarah asked suddenly. All eyes looked to her. _That was out loud_. She cleared her throat and continued. "You two could get hurt."

"It's necessary, though," Finnvah replied. He started to say something else, and jumped in his seat. She realized Jareth had kicked him under the table.

"All right," Sarah said, pushing her plate back and giving the three of them a stern look. "Obviously something bigger than monster hunts is happening. Care to share, boys?"

Finnvah cleared the dishes with his eyes cast down. Jareth found something very interesting to look at on the ceiling, and Toby, the only innocent one, was the only one to look back at Sarah. "It's a sweep and clear," he said plainly. "We've been making space."

"It's nothing to worry Your Majesty," Finn said gently. Sarah gave him her most dire Library Lady look. The more courteous Finnvah became, the less inclined she was to trust what he said. She turned the look on Jareth, who visibly paled.

"Does this have anything to do with what you and Toby were doing today?" Sarah asked, with remarkable calmness. _I don't like secrets_.

"As a matter of fact, yes. And there's no need to look so fierce, Sarah," Jareth said defensively. "I've only been waiting for young Finnvarrah and Toby to come visit so the four of us could take counsel together."

"That talk we were going to have," Finnvah said, enigmatically.

"This is that talk." Jareth leaned forward and summoned a crystal into his hand.

The light in the room grew perceptively darker, as though the candles were on a dimmer switch. Jareth's voice took on a distant singsong quality as he twirled the crystal in his fingers. "A land serene and a crystal moon, moving without care under the feet of the lost and the lonely. The Labyrinth, the last largest stronghold of creation's bastards, always in perpetual bloom. A place that no member of the Gentry but me ever cared to tend." The crystal glowed with a low and homely light, one that spoke of warmth and summer flowers and endless days of innocent delight.

_The Gentry_, Sarah thought. _The Fae_. Those angelic creatures never truly born and never truly dying, making and unmaking themselves and devouring the souls of humanity the way she'd consumed dessert.

They engendered no children, but satisfied themselves with warping physical matter and magical substance to amuse themselves and pass their endless days. Some enjoyed being worshipped as gods, or became individual embodiments of greater powers and godlike concepts. _Which really boils down to the same thing, now that I think about it. Gods and symbolic archetypes_. Jareth had been one of them, once. _Yes, Egg_, she said, stroking her belly protectively. _Your father was kin to gods once. I helped him change. I brought him down. If I hadn't, you would have never known him. If he hadn't been capable of changing, you would never have been at all._

The crystal bubble floated fragile out of Jareth's hand and hovered over the table. "The Labyrinth. My parent, my lover, my child. A place where time runs forward or backward, but nothing ever changes. Until now." A lightning-flash from the crystal scoured the room white, and miniature thunder echoed inside. "Now change is coming, and I cannot stop it." The light of the crystal turned gray, and then blue with cold. "My kingdom has never had to bear up under Winter, though the majority have endured and survived them out in the mortal world. I spent a great portion of this day speaking to certain advocates, certain looked-up-to personages in the various precincts. They will spread the word. Some of the people will stay and do what they've done before—cope. But quite a few more will need to leave, or want to take shelter elsewhere. Finnvarrah and Toby have been carving out territory in the mortal world to accommodate the creatures it was my job to protect and defend." Jareth's voice became placatory. "I didn't tell him why I wanted it done; I told him to do it. He does as I ask."

_Oh, it's that old chestnut_, Sarah thought, wincing. _Finn does what you ask out of love, you silly owl, not obedience. Maddening inhuman man, don't you still understand the difference?_ "You should have told me," Sarah said. She stretched her hand out and summoned the floating crystal to her hand. To her relief, it came to her, hovering over her palm and flashing out pinpoints of golden light that pierced the blue cold. "I'm the Queen of the Labyrinth. You need to talk to me about these things." The light of the crystal swirled through the room. Everywhere the golden light touched, tiny flowers bloomed, and then shed their leaves and dropped petals of green sparks.

Sarah kept her eyes on Jareth, who seemed on the verge of applying one of the "Daddy Knows Best" homilies that exhausted and enraged her when she wasn't being spoiled by their application. But Finn was watching, and Jareth was aware of him watching, and Jareth always wanted Finnvah to think well of him. _I'd be jealous of that_, Sarah thought, _if it weren't so much like a deadbeat dad trying to earn the respect of his estranged son._

"I'm consulting you now, Sarah," Jareth replied. "I wanted everyone's advice." His raised eyebrow hinted at uncertainty. _It's not because of me_, _not because of some macho protect-the-woman bullshit_, Sarah thought. _He knows he's at his best when he's playing the king for Finnvah. He was waiting so he could _be_ his best to have this conversation_. Sarah nodded at him.

"I apologize for my temper," Sarah said. "Can't you turn the seasons back? Reorder time? Change things back the way they were?"

"I can't re-order time anymore," Jareth said. "I've lost the knack along with my talons. The wheel of seasons is stiff and will only move forward. Winter won't be stopped. If we're very, very lucky, we can hope for an early Spring." The crystal floated low, full of snow now like a shaken snow-globe. "And there is something else to consider, something which greatly troubles me." Jareth's voice darkened.

"Winter isn't just the cold season in the northern hemisphere. It is a philosophy, a state of mind. Winter is a time for drawing in, keeping warm, playing games, engaging in intellectual pursuits. Doors are shut tight. In the mortal world, it is echoed in both the physical season and the… metaphysical developments which follow. It has been Winter in the mortal world for centuries. The current King of Winter, the King Over the World, has wanted to acquire the Labyrinth for a long time. And now he's here. He's unbound and free." His tone was grave.

"Jareth," Sarah said. "What are you saying?"

"I went to the Observatory today, to speak with John Company, King of Winter. What I found was… nothing. Someone, or something, let him out. And not just him. Every one of the higher powers and wild and dangerous forces has also been set loose. The season of Winter is here, in the Labyrinth, and my un-brother is also set free in this world and yours with all the greater forces unbound in his wake. He'll attempt something. He may try to drive all of us out into the mortal world, where I'm nothing."

"You could never be nothing," Finnvah protested, looking hurt.

"Less than nothing, then. An outlaw. Outside the laws of men and angels and fae. No spirits to enforce or art to enchant."

"Still a king," Sarah insisted.

"How so, darling Sarah? How so when there is a fairy king over that world, steeped in his power and happy to wield that power against those he favors and those he hates?" Jareth drew a breath, and the crystal flew back to his hand. "I'm not prophesying doom, but I'm feeling cautious and careful. So I wanted to ask you, my petty nobility and… family. What should be done?" The crystal arced back into Jareth's hand, and he closed it in his fist. "How many doors should I shut to the Labyrinth? My fear says to shut them all and lock them tight, and deal with Winter on its own terms. But I dislike acting out of fear."

"There are always the Houses of the Free People, Your Majesty," Finn suggested. "Red Branch would be happy to take in some of the Labyrinth for the winter. And there are a few others I could suggest. The Jollymakers and House Greensleeves," Finn said. "Red Branch has a good reciprocal relationship with them, and they're not scatterbrained. Bonus points, they speak English and not that archaic Dutch. The Free People owe you. They'll be glad to help. I 'll send messages. I'll send word."

"_We_ will," Toby said, nodding firmly.

"Well, I didn't want to speak for you, honey-Bee."

"I'm going with you," Toby said stubbornly.

"Your faith in me is flattering, young Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix, but it may be misplaced," Jareth said calmly. "Your requests may not be met with enthusiasm."

"I'll generate the necessary enthusiasm. Your Majesty." Finnvah grinned his insouciant grin, and Sarah saw that Jareth even managed a thin smile back.

"Even for goblin guests?" Jareth asked. And the grin dropped from Finnvah's face like chalk-marks in water. "That's what I thought. None of the Free People will take in goblins willingly. Too destructive. Too chaotic. Too difficult to control. And most certainly my prerogative and not anyone else's."

"We'll take care of the goblins and the Goblin City," Sarah said firmly. "Even if we can't do anything more, we can do that." What she wanted to do was go over to Jareth and sit on his knee, and have him wrap his arms around her and tell her everything would be perfect and everything would be safe.

"We agreed to go and visit your family for Christmas," Jareth suggested, catching something about her mood and reaching under the table to pat her knee. "It might be best… if you prolonged your visit. John Company hates you as much as he hates me, Sarah. You thwarted his plans for me."

"Nope," Sarah said. "I'm not leaving you. Come Hell or high water, I am staying with you. Aren't I Queen Sarah? Aren't my powers as formidable as yours? Will as strong, kingdom as great? I'm staying with you. I can help more if I'm here. Besides," she said with a bravura she didn't quite feel, "I'm not afraid of the King of Winter. If he tries anything…" Jareth's fingers curled a little tighter with hers. "I'll teach him to be afraid of _me_."

And Finnvah laughed and applauded with a "Hear, hear!" and Jareth finally laughed, and the discussion became less tense. They talked for another hour, pouring round the water and the wine several more times, laying plans. Sarah tried to keep her attention fixed on the voices and faces of the family Jareth had stitched together as carefully as he'd stitched the dress she wore tonight. But she yawned once, and then a second time, unable to help herself, and Jareth had called the council closed when she yawned a third time.

"You could keep going without me," she demurred, as Jareth offered his arm to her.

"No," he said. "We won't go on without you. It's time for bed. You're tired." And she was, she was. She was working, and she was making, and no matter how important or interesting the discussion was, it wasn't as important as Egg. The Labyrinth might be parent and lover and child to Jareth, but he was ready to put all cares for it aside, just to care for her.

In their bedroom, she smiled to him as he acted the maid, taking off her shoes and pulling her dress over her head, leaving her in a pretty shift that was both undergarment and nightgown in one. Every day he found time to embroider a flower or an insect against a hem, and it was one of their games for Sarah to discover the new addition. Today it was a bumblebee, fat and fuzzy as the real item, and probably an intentional reminder of her brother's new nickname. She pointed it out without comment. One of the happiest surprises of their marriage so far was how they didn't need constant conversation to fill in empty space and moments. She could just be with him, and feel everything she felt, and relax into the friendly and communicative silence.

He combed through her hair, which was thicker and stronger than it had ever been, curling itself around everything and getting everywhere. She forgave him for not sharing his concerns with her earlier. He had a need for an audience that would, in any human man, be the most disgusting narcissism. But Jareth couldn't help himself. It was his nature to respond, to reflect, to be what others needed him to be. It always had been, even when what they needed was a villain, or a victim. She had seen it before, when she had made him the villain of her rite of passage eighteen years ago. She saw it more recently when they took their morning constitutional together, in different places of the Labyrinth, when the smallfolk who inhabited it came forward and asked him to judge disputes or pronounce judgments or even answer requests for a song or some sage advice. He was King for them, because they needed him to be. And he was also a proud husband and father-to-be, showing off Sarah and her increasingly heavy burden to all and sundry. But whatever the performance was, there was a core of his essential self that wasn't a reflection, and she nurtured it where she found it.

_This is why I can deny you nothing you want, for your own, for yourself, Jareth. You ask for so little_. He had wanted the baby to be born in the Labyrinth, and had wanted it so badly that she'd agreed, almost without argument, dropping her life and her work to please him. He wanted to dress her up and collect a roomful of electrical instruments that couldn't be played, and he wanted to spend time playing checkers or backgammon or Go Fish with her and stage vast and ridiculous pageants of goblin legends for her, ones that sometimes involved chickens. He wanted her to eat whatever she wanted and to take food only from her hands. He wanted to devote some hours to his own pursuits, and give her leisure to explore her own—which most recently was sleep. He wanted to keep her safe That wasn't a reflection. It was him.

His comforting hand came down at that moment and covered her forehead. _Yes_, his skin told hers. _Yes, that is what I want. You, safe._

_You're everything_, she told the baby and Jareth both, without words. _John Company, the King of Winter, he's nothing. Winter is nothing. Only you are real_.

He stroked his fingers back over her scalp and she turned and smiled up at him. He'd let the goblins hack away at his hair again, and it was a perfect and gorgeous mess. She stood and took his hand and led him to the window.

"It's beautiful," she said softly, looking out at the snow. It swirled down from the sky, down on the rooftops and the people outside. The braziers were full and lit, making little beacons of homely light. Despite the late hour, the Goblin City was busy. Some goblins were warming themselves at the fires. Others were engaged in deadly snowball fights. Still others were singing songs in praise of war and blood and the death of Elves and men, and others about explosions, or wolves, or gout to the tunes of Christmas music. The snow seemed to dampen these sounds, making them kindly, even sweet. But Jareth only sighed and pressed his eyes against Sarah's shoulder.

"No, Jareth. It's beautiful. You mustn't be afraid." She took his wrists and moved his hands from her hips to cup around her waist. "Everything is going to be all right."

"Oh, she knows that for a fact, does she?" he asked archly, but she saw in the reflection of the window that he was looking out, and what he saw didn't completely horrify him. They stood in silence for a while.

"What would have happened," Sarah whispered, "If you'd left me alone here?"

He waited a long time before answering. "You would have managed," he finally whispered back. Jareth was never one to lie_. I would have managed_, she thought. _But it would have been lonely_. He kissed the bare nape of her neck and rubbed her round belly in careful slow circles. She saw his eyes flicker back outside, watching the flakes falling in their beautiful spirals. His hands were warm.

"It _is_ beautiful," he said with childlike wonder. They watched the snow drift down for endless eternal moments.

She turned in his arms and kissed him tenderly. "You're more beautiful than the snow," Sarah said. "Take me to bed."

* * *

"Bee, what are you doing?" Finn asked him in the dark, as Bee drew back the covers and slid into the narrow bed next to him. The boy's skin was warm from a recent scrubbing, and Finn's next thought was that he was feeling his _skin_, Bee's _naked_ skin, and the boy slithered around him and he was there, and _oh shit…_

"I'm cold," Bee said, with an innocence totally belied by his hard and adult member pressed against Finn's thigh. Bee's fingers found the smooth raised lines of the tattoos that curved down Finnvah's shoulders to his arms, and he shivered as the boy traced the lines of the marks that wove down his ribcage, swirled against his hipbones. "Don't you want to keep me warm?" Bee asked, still innocent, but his hands became bolder, knowing.

_Sarah said, oh sweet gods of Hell, I want this, in her own house she's going to murder me_, and he ignored everything and kissed that open and willing mouth, taking it, sucking the sweetness of Bee's tongue, knowing he was on the threshold of total damnation. "Bee," Finn gasped, knowing he needed to push the boy away now. "Bee, please, I can't."

"Yes you can," Bee said, taking him in a strong grip. "I can feel you can. I want to. With you. Please." Finn let himself drown in one more sweet kiss, savouring the taste, but then pressed Bee back on the mattress, pressed himself away and out of his grasp.

Bee made a sound of hunger and frustration, reaching out for him, struggling to get back to him, but Finn leaned his forearm against his chest and held him down. "Why not?" Bee asked, close to tears. "Why don't you want me?"

"Bee," Finn said. "Toby. " He rested his head against the boy's chest.

"I'm nineteen. I'm legal," Bee said, as if that made everything acceptable. He gripped one of Finn's horns in his hand, a second thumb, a protuberance caught in his fist. It made Finn's skull ache pleasantly. "Can we please, please just fuck already?" He steered Finn's face to his using his horn as leverage. _Steer is the appropriate word_, Finn thought, even as Bee kissed him in a way that should have completely distracted him. _Sarah will make a steer out of me if I do this. But…_ Bee sucked at his lip, _where the bee sucks there suck I, yes—no. No!  
_  
"Bee, stop," Finn said, trying to remember just why it was important to say no to the warm and wiggly youth who wanted nothing more than to receive him. "This is an ambush," Finn groaned.

"This is an invitation," Bee said, now sounding irritated.

"You know where we're going next?" Finn asked gently, hoping a sudden shift in tone might turn this all around. He couldn't quite bring himself to let go of Bee, but tried to calm and soothe instead of rouse. "We're about to go back up into the world, and talk to dangerous people. _They'll_ ambush me. They'll lie and cheat and steal. And they won't ask my permission to do the things they'll probably do to me. Or you, if you come with me."

"Of course I'm coming with you! I love you!" Bee looked aside and then abruptly let Finn go. He tried to leave the bed, but Finn grabbed his wrist. Toby tried to unwrap those strong brown fingers, gave up, and turned his face aside in shame. "I'm sorry I ambushed you. It wasn't fair." He shook his wrist angrily, but Finn held on. "Let me go," Bee said.

Finn dropped his wrist and drew a shuddering breath. "Get back in this bed. Please."

Bee did as he asked, but carefully instead of eagerly. Finn tucked his covers in at his waist, a ridiculous stopgap measure.

"I'm not saying no forever. I'm saying no for right now." Bee moved further away, suspicious and angry. "But I'm saying yes for later. Soon." _And let Sarah make a liar out of me for that, Finn thought. Just let her try._ "You don't know a lot about me, honey-Bee. You may not like me when you know more. Sex… isn't a big deal at Red Branch. It's casual. Friendly. I've had a lot of partners."

"Are you poz?" Bee asked.

Finn wanted to laugh at that, but didn't. He was a veteran of the culture that used that lingo. Such an abrupt and ugly word for a death sentence. "No, Bee." He stroked the boy's face, which was wet. "I'm just trying to do right by you."

_I'm really about to do this_, Finn thought, _But I don't care. I have to give him something_. His breath shifted into the low tones of desire, and he felt Bee's skin warming again. "Just lie there, like you're doing. Touch yourself. Lower," Finn said roughly. "Imagine it's me. I wish it was." He fixed his eyes on the motion of Bee's hand, on the blush that rose up on his pale skin. "How I want you. I want…" Finn caressed his own dark skin, fingers shivering goosebumps into his arms. "I want to touch you, there, where you're touching yourself, just lightly, just a little, and feel how hot you can get, how hard. See you twitching and full. And then, when you beg, I'll give you just a little more. Just a little. See your hips thrust like they're doing now, Bee. Put my hands on you harder, firmer. Feel the heat coming off your skin. So hot it seems like your sweat should sizzle. I'll want to lick your skin, just to taste it, see if it burns like a ghost pepper. Hear you moaning. Hearing you call my name. And just as you're about to spill, I'll take you in my mouth…

"Finn," Toby moaned, looking him in the eyes, desperate.

Finn's eyes glowed like molten gold. "And then you'll come," he murmured, "only then."

Bee crossed the forbidden distance between them and kissed desperately at Finn's mouth, losing all control, and making a sticky mess of himself and a portion of their bed. He was frantic, hungry, sucking at Finn's lips, searching for his tongue, reaching for his shoulders. Finn allowed himself just one moment of pure abandon as he kissed Bee back with equal passion… and then pushed the boy away with a lingering caress.

"Hold on to me, please," Toby begged. He was so pretty, so earnest, so undone.

_And this is how principles get compromised and promises get broken_, Finn thought with resignation. With trembling hands he took Bee back into the circle of his arms and hummed to him gently until the boy slept. He watched him for a long time, and worried about how much more complicated things were sure to get now. He thought about his utter lack of remorse for what he'd just done. And he had to smile, because even without touching him, Bee had screwed him but good.

* * *

**Next… Chapter Four: "The Star"**

* * *

_Finnvarrah knows his Shakespeare. I bet he's got the Fair Youth sonnets memorized. Jareth also knows his Shakespeare. Possibly also Shakespeare himself. Time is one of Jareth's old lovers._

_ I think I made a few other literary references in here, but I forgot where I put them. If you see one, name it and you shall have a sweetie._

_ Many thanks to Frances "Dark Lady" Osgood for acting as my beta and encouraging these shenanigans._

* * *

**Panda**: Sarah should have DEFINITELY shot John Company. But no worries, maybe she'll get the chance again?  
**Askeebe**: Nope, Toby's legal age. He's just innocent. Or maybe not so much after this chapter…  
**radar wing**: Right on. There was enough material to work with after the last story, although what it's getting sewn into is a bit of a surprise for me, too.  
**Jetredgirl**: There should be a Goblin King card in the Major Arcana, we're all agreed.  
**Kilikina12**: Here 'tis!  
**irgroomer**: The plot doth thicken, as doth certain parts of the anatomy, verily, forsooth…  
**Jalen Strix**: Nowhere good, nope.  
**Kwizzle**: Horny Toby is going to get Finn turned into a hornytoad by Sarah if they don't watch out. Goblin Queen don't play.


	4. The Star

**Chapter Four: The Star**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter Four:**

**"Chilly Down"—David Bowie**  
**"Ain't It Fun"—Paramore**

* * *

Bee made it a point to sit across from Finn, and not next to him, on the ride back home that morning. Ostensibly it was because they were carrying quite a lot of Goblin Market cargo wrapped up in bundles and loops, and there wasn't room for them to sit together. Still, Bee looked daggers at Finn, who parried them all indifferently, which was maddening. Bee tried to find things other than Finn to occupy his mind with. It was going to be a longish ride.

Bee thought about the fairies. Catching them had been a tricky business. When the Goblin King arrived back at the dwarf's cottage, much earlier than Bee had expected, he caught him idly sketching the dying flora. Jareth had drawn himself up to full height in front of the still empty cages, coat-tail blowing around his thighs, and given Bee a look of such supreme displeasure that Bee had had to fight the urge to cower. He understood then why Finn always approached Jareth so courteously. Bee had put his sketchbook away in a hurry and snapped to attention.

"What have you been doing?" Jareth had asked. He had tightened the gloves on his hands and kicked one of the empty cages. "Toby, where are the fairies I told you to gather?"

"Chill," Bee said. "They're in there." He had darted into the cottage with a dour Goblin King following dangerously behind.

_Hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats_, Bee thought to himself. Every horizontal surface of the cottage was covered with sleeping fairies, their gossamer wings folded around them, twitter-snoring softly in the dark and warm space. It made an impressive display.

"Huh," Jareth said, rubbing the side of his nose, obviously confused but pleased.

"I didn't want to stack them in the cages until later. I thought they might, you know, get squished."

"No, they like a little rough trade. You caught them all?" Jareth picked up one by the hair, but it slept on.

Toby smiled a grim smile. "I think so." He'd tried using the sprayer, but it was awkward, and every time he sprayed one, it struggled and bit before he could transfer it to the cage. He'd gotten about ten in one of the cages before the other fairies caught wise and began dive-bombing him. He'd taken shelter inside, but then one of the fairies in the cage that had only gotten the edge of the spray had woken up and started weeping like a lost child, and it made him feel… horrible. "I found some sugar and mashed up some stuff from the garden and mixed the spray with it. They ate it. Knocked them out. But, you know, I worried I might have poisoned them or something."

"No, they'll be fine. You did very well," Jareth had said. "Better than I'd imagined."

Bee looked at Finn, slouched down and half-dozing on the subway seat. He ought to be reliving those all too brief minutes in Finn's arms, not remembering weird challenges set by the Goblin King.

"Why are you staring at me?" Finn finally asked, without opening his eyes.

_I woke up ready to punch you or fuck you but I was alone, that's why._ "I'm looking at you because you're amazing," Bee said sarcastically.

"Do go on."

"You're so tall, and brown, and huge. You're the world's _biggest walking asshole_."

"Such naughty language." Finn hardly even blinked and settled more comfortably into his seat.

"You're one to talk about naughty language," Bee muttered. "Just you watch yourself, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. I'm in the Goblin King's favor."

Finn had yawned soft as a cat and nodded in agreement. "I like your new coat," he said. "Suits you."

Jareth had given him the coat. It was black leather, with zips on the pockets and cuffs, and painted with narrow bands of gold stripes on the sleeves. "A bee coat for the young Bee," Jareth had said. But that had come much later in the day, after all the errands.

Jareth had hauled Bee and the fairies along like luggage to several interesting places in the Labyrinth's interior, and had incomprehensible conversations with the various brownies and pixies and worms and gatekeepers and sylphs and dryads. Sometimes Bee felt he was very, very close to understanding the talk, but it never quite resolved into specific words. More like moods, commands, questions, given in tone of voice and the posture of Jareth's shoulders.

"I didn't know you could speak tree," Bee said, as they walked away from a grove where Jareth had had an interminable discussion with the biggest oak Bee had ever seen. The phonemes were made of swaying arms and flickering fingers, sighing susurration, and even probably the subtle shadings of color of Jareth's long blond hair.

"I speak every language," Jareth said egotistically, and with another stomach-lurching hop, they were back in a room in the Castle. Jareth set down one of the cages of fairies and opened it expediently by taking the entire front off. But Bee had eyes for something else, the one thing growing there. A gigantic peach tree bore golden-red fruit far out of season, mixed with flowering branches of tongue-pink. The released fairies drifted blurrily past him, sticking their wee heads into the throats of the flowers, or lounging on the curved fuzziness of the peaches. Slow petals and flecks of glitter showered down like snow.

The peaches glowed with warmth and light. The acid sweet smell of them filled his nose and his head. Saliva filled his mouth. Breakfast had been long ago. Bee took a step forward. There was one fruit there, hanging low, big as a softball. He tested its weight under his hand. Soft, fuzzy, ripe.

"Toby?" Jareth asked, from very far away. There was a tension and a balance between that voice and the peach in his palm. "That fruit is not for you."

"But I want one," Bee whispered.

"You mustn't," Jareth's distant voice answered. There was no anger in his voice, only gentle warning.

Bee gripped the fruit. Just a small tug, and it would be free. It would be his._ He wants me to. He says no but he means yes. He wants me to have it. I want one_ _so I get to have one!_

"Bee?" Jareth asked, but his tone seemed seductive.

_No_. Bee dropped his hand by sheer force of will. It was covered with a thin layer of dull yellow dust. He rubbed it off on his pants and turned to look at Jareth. The Goblin King's expression, as per usual, was mobile and readable. It was turning from anger and anticipation into guarded approval. Jareth exhaled slowly.

"Sorry," Bee said.

"It's all right." Jareth's strange eyes held golden reflections of the fruit. "_Bloom-down-cheeked peaches. Peaches with a velvet nap. Sweet to tongue and sound to eye_." Bee blinked slowly. Those eyes were pools of syrup, contracting in flickers, like secret semaphores. He had the sense that Jareth was pleased to tempt him and pleased to see him resist temptation. "I understand the allure. But you wouldn't have liked it, once you'd eaten."

_Why would you let me get so close to something I'm not supposed to have?_ Bee wondered, disappointed. Jareth flashed him a conspiratorial smile. _Oh. Was this some sort of test? Did I pass?_

"Eat this instead," Jareth said, pulling a crystal out of his coat-pocket. He tossed it to Bee; when he caught it, it was a candy bar. "Come on then," Jareth said kindly, extending his hand. Bee took it, and they left the normal way, through a door that as soon as they were through it he couldn't see any more. He devoured the chocolate, but wondered when dinner would happen. "Let's make ourselves pretty for Sarah and Finnvarrah."

* * *

Their stop came, the very last stop, and Bee and Finn helped each other in silence, adjusting their bundles and packages and items atop and around their backpacks. The weight was formidable, but Bee felt some pride, keeping up with Finn's longer strides. He could handle the load and the walk and the general process of keeping healthy and alive while living the way Finn did.

"We'll go to Jollymaker's first. Two birds, one stone. You'll like it," Finn said as they climbed the steps. He offered Bee a peacemaking hand, but Bee didn't take it. The city blew cold from the air and hot from doorways and grates, starch and sweets and exhaust. It smelled good to Bee. They went slowly and were generally ignored by everyone, which was one of the first tricks Finn had taught him. Eyes slid off them before quite making contact, and people parted to let them pass.

"Most people don't really see things if they're all around them," Finn had explained once—perhaps the very first lesson he'd taught Bee in the nature of glamour and camouflage. "Who looks for an individual grain of sand on the beach, or for one specific ant in the anthill? We're in a city full of abandoned people. Watch them and carry a profile like theirs. Be someone invisible. Then it's easy to be ignored." And then later, when Bee had haltingly learned these basics—though he failed sometimes, because he was curious about faces and because he got cruised, little red flags of desire and attention that broke his concentration—Finn had taught him to move in others' wakes. "Etheric body chemtrails," Finn had said dreamily, toked to the gills and watching his hand move. Bee, likewise tripping balls, had seen what Finn meant. If you stood or walked behind someone crackling with a particular type of feeling, whether that was anger or beauty or drunkenness or insanity or self-importance, you could slip into the lee of that energy and pass unnoticed. Finn was a patient teacher, making him practice and practice until he felt he was dissolving into the shadows and daydreams of every person they tailed, hopscotching with delirious ease, the emotional equivalent of hitching skateboard momentum off of moving cars.

"They'll see you, but they won't see you," Finn had finally said with pride. "And if they remember you, it'll only be a fragment of a dream gone by the time they take a morning piss. Now you're ready."

"Ready for what?"

"Ready to go on the hunt." And that was how it had begun, but those first lessons still remained useful. Though it would all be easier if they could travel Jareth's way, in the blink of an eye.

Hopping from one street to another, they came to one of the little shops in the city that was narrow and deep. "Jollymaker's Toys," the legend read in faded striped letters over the door. "New and Old."

_Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium_, Bee thought, as they went into the peppermint fume. He looked around and touched nothing, no matter how it beguiled. The proprietor, who Finn addressed as Mr. Jollymaker himself, looked like a Jewish version of Santa Claus, and had the Yiddish accent to match. He regarded Finn warmly over his half-moon spectacles, and they were soon engaged in a comfortable conversation which devolved naturally into haggling over some of the items the two of them had brought back from the Market. After Finn unloaded him, Bee moved freely around the shop, letting his eyes taste all the marvels. There were tin toys and automatons and wax dolls and wind-up robots that shot sparks from their mouths. There were model planes and clockwork birds and kites shaped like dragons and phoenixes. There were jacks and chalk and tiny decks of cards, and tall glass cylinders full of dice and yo-yos and shimmering sparkling bouncing balls of all sizes.

* * *

"My workshop," Jareth had said, opening the door for Bee. Somewhere between the atrium and this room God only knew where in the twisting passages of the castle, they'd picked up a goblin tail. Jareth smiled indulgently. "Oh, come on, then," he said, and the goblins scrambled in like a pack of ugly puppies.

Jareth tossed his coat over the shoulders of a dressmaker's dummy already wearing two coats while the goblins conspired mischief and havoc. A few of them dragged a chair to a clear patch of space and dusted off the seat, offering it to the king. The Goblin King had Finn's trick of making every chair into a throne and every throne into a chaise lounge.

The Goblin King's workroom was well-stocked. There were wardrobes belching out a bigger variety of cloth and clothing than Bee had ever seen outside the garment district, and an old fashioned foot-treadle sewing machine. There was a workbench with clamps and chisels and tools and oils and resins, and a nearly-finished high cradle shaped like an eggshell. And there were musical instruments and sheets of mundane-looking paper scrawled with musical notations. And more.

"When do you sleep?" Bee asked. A triad of goblins had gathered up scissors and a basin of water and an apple-crate and began to cut the Goblin King's long, smooth and enviable hair into a species of disaster. Another goblin knelt down at the king's feet and proceeded to polish his boots to mirrors.

"Oh, I fit it in here and there," Jareth drawled, closing his eyes under the goblin's noisy ministrations. "It's very satisfying to make things, Toby. Sarah's busy making something. I feel the need to keep up, though my work pales in comparison."

Bee pushed his hair back behind his ears. It was long enough to always be in the way and short enough to refuse a ponytail. Jareth's hair was a type of wealth he seemed determined to squander, though the goblins were enjoying themselves.

"Would you like a haircut?" Jareth asked. "There's another chair around here somewhere." The goblin wielded the scissors like he was intending to trepan Jareth's skull. Toby winced with every pass, but Jareth looked blissed.

"I… I'd prefer it goblins didn't cut my hair." He looked dubiously at Jareth's coiffure, which was beginning to look distinctly cockatiel-with-forelocks.

"Your loss," Jareth said. The barbarous trio hopped down and tilted a hand mirror up for Jareth to inspect himself with. He ran a hand over the pillaged wasteland and seemed genuinely pleased with the effect. "Very nice," he said. "Well done."

"Well done for a one-handed stroke victim," Bee said under his breath, and the goblins laughed uproariously. So did Jareth. He stood up and whipped the drape from his neck. When he picked up the scissors and gestured for Bee to take his seat, Bee hesitated.

"Well?" Jareth said, clicking the scissors open and shut.

_Hair grows back_, Bee reminded himself. _And Finn said if the Gentry ever offer any gifts, it's important not to give a direct 'no_.' He sighed and sat down. "Just please don't give me the usual, if that's what you're wearing. I don't want to look ridiculous."

Jareth lifted the curly weight of Bee's hair and let it go again, and began to snip. "Do you feel ridiculous?"

"All the time." Bee said. "Cool as sandals with socks. Useful as tits on a spider. Ridiculous." He sighed.

"Well then. A haircut can hardly make matters worse." Jareth cut hair more slowly than the goblins did, which was more reassuring than his logic. He pushed Bee's head one way and then another, and Bee found himself relaxing. Strange to talk to someone who wasn't Finn, or his parents, but… he liked Jareth, and he had the feeling Jareth liked him, too, on his own merits.

"Why do you feel ridiculous?" Jareth asked him, cutting away.

"I guess… I don't feel like myself. Like who I want to be. Sarah's always been exactly who she wants. But it's like her and Dad and Mom have this image of who I'm supposed to be, and I feel weird when I try to be myself. Like it's not allowed."

"Does Finn allow you?" Jareth asked gently.

"Sometimes he does. Sometimes he doesn't."

"Oh?"

"He treats me like a baby. All… indulgent one minute and condescending the next."

"How would you prefer he treated you?"

"Like a boyfriend. I want him. I _want_ him." He was surprised by the fierceness of his own greed. Jareth paused in his snipping and held Bee's skull in his hands for a moment.

"Should I give him to you? I can, you know."

Bee tried to turn his head, but Jareth held him by the temples, the scissors cool against his skin. "Come now, young Toby. You think I can't? Finnvarrah is mine. I made him. And I can dispose of him in any way I choose. Even give him to you, _if you so wish_."

Bee concentrated on his breathing. _Holy shit. He's not even kidding. He'd give me Finn. He could. Finn does whatever he says. And if he told him to be mine… I'd _have_ him. Own him_. The idea was arousing.

"And he'd obey me the way he does you," Bee murmured. "Why?"

Jareth cut a few more locks of his hair before answering. "Do you remember the first time we met?"

"I do. I shouldn't. I was too little. But I remember you. I think we had… conversations. But that's impossible. I'm probably just remembering what Sarah told me. I was just a baby."

"I speak fluent baby," Jareth said in a tone that was definitely not a put-on. "And I remember our talks very well. You were such a nice little chap that I wanted to keep you. I would have turned you into a goblin. The Goblin Prince."

Bee turned to look at Jareth and discovered that Jareth had held the mirror up in front of his face, so that Bee was looking at his own face instead. There was an expression in his own face that Bee didn't recognize. It was the covetously superior look that bothered him so much when Jareth turned it on Finn. His hair was a cap of blond fuzz that came to a sting-point over his forehead. His eyes were a blue so pale they seemed white. He looked spoiled and regal and cruel. He looked sharp and dangerous and desirable. The goblins clustered around him, paying him homage, and he was more beautiful by contrast with their ugliness.

"But kittens turn into cats and babies turn into boys, and you would have wanted more than me. But perhaps there's a story where Sarah lost our game and you grew up with me, and perhaps one day inevitably your eyes fell on Finnvarrah and you fell in love. Perhaps I would have been jealous of having your attentions divided. Perhaps I would have destroyed you both rather than receive less than my due." His voice was smoky and dark. "Or perhaps certain people belong with each other and only a fool would separate them. I would have tried to make you into my son, Toby. Tell me, whose son are you?"

Bee looked in the mirror. He saw highlights of brown in the blondness.

"My father is Robert Williams."

Jareth lowered the mirror like harlequin taking off his mask, so that just his eyes showed.

"And what does Robert Williams' son say to my offer?"

Bee gulped. "Thank you for the haircut," he said, shaken, "But I'll work things out with Finn myself, if it's all the same to you."

"Wise choice, Bee," Jareth said, smiling slightly, putting the mirror down. The feeling in the room lightened almost immediately.

"Speaking of those long-ago conversations," Jareth said, "You made a few grand proclamations in bodily effluvia. I think I had to change my clothes six or seven times, and we had at least one very serious discussion about toilet training." Jareth put down the scissors. "But mostly you were pleasant and obliging, and unafraid. It pleases me that you haven't changed that much." He dusted the last few strands of hair off Toby's ears and went to the wardrobe and pulled out the black leather jacket, the one with the gold stripes on the biceps. "Since you won't accept Finnvarrah, this will have to do instead." He discarded Toby's torn coat like it was trash, and helped him put the new one on. It fitted exactly, as if it had been made just for him.

"It was meant to be your Christmas present, but you need it now. What do you think? Is it cool?"

"Wow," Bee said, inspecting himself in the wardrobe mirror. "It's really cool." There were leather gloves in the side-pockets to match, and his head lifted out of the rolled collar like the stamen of a lily.

"You are most definitely your father's son," Jareth said quietly. "Oh! This is also for you." He tucked an ornate key into Bee's unzipped breast pocket. "Use it tonight along with your considerable natural charm."

"What is it?"

"The key to Finnvarrah's room." Jareth laughed salaciously. "Well?" he said, interrupting himself. The goblins joined in with bawdy laughter. And Bee had laughed too.

* * *

"For you, nice boy." A flossy-haired elfin girl in a candycane petticoat offered him a wooden yo-yo. Bee startled, his thoughts interrupted. Before he knew what he was doing, his hand had closed on it.

"I'm not here to buy," Bee said regretfully.

"Trade me a kiss for it," she suggested.

Bee thought about kissing her cheek, but it was a nice yo-yo. Her lips tasted of licorice, but he kept it brief. She blushed and simpered, and Bee smiled at her.

Finn cleared his throat. He and the proprietor were both looking at them, Jollymaker mildly and Finn less mildly. "Bee, let's be on our way. Thank you, Elder, for your suggestions. I'll follow up and get back to you."

"And the other matter?" the old man asked.

"I promise to put it near the top of my to-do list," Finn said. "Just remember the Goblin King and Red Branch affectionately when it's done."

And it was back out into the city.

* * *

"The way you handle these situations, Bee, gods be good." Finn shook his head.

"What situation?" Bee wound the yo-yo as they waited for the bus and remembered how annoyed he was with Finn.

"Kissing his daughter right in front of him. Like she's something on offer. Lucky I got the information I needed before you pulled that stunt."

"Well she asked!" Bee retorted. "You make such a big deal out of these people, and the Labyrinth too. But I can handle myself." He tossed his hair and was halfway through giving a superior smile when Finn grabbed his arm and then his jaw and squeezed his smile to death.

"Bee." Finn said, "You're so wrong it's painful."

"Jealous much?" Bee said around Finn's fingers.

Finn let him go. "A bit," he admitted

Bee made a great and resentful show of rubbing his face. "All right then. Stop being the world's biggest asshole. Those people weren't like the werewolf or the shuck," He glared at Finn. "_Those_ things were dangerous. All the Free People seem… nice. The Labyrinth and the goblins are like that too. Nice. I can totally deal."

"Nice," Finn said, temper flaring again. He had the urge to grab Bee and shove him against the alleyway and fuck some sense into him. _Which is probably what he wants. He wants my attention. And if he can't get it with sex, he'll try getting it through sheer contrariness_. He settled for running his hands through his hair and making it all stand on end. "Bee, the Labyrinth may seem harmless to you, but that's only because the Goblin King bends over backward for you. The Free People won't unless there's something in it for them. I wish you'd listen to me." He reached out and took Bee's hand. Bee flinched away, but then took it. The bus arrived; they grabbed the seats in the back, sprawling out side-by-side.

"I listen to you. I do everything you ask me to do. I get things done. And you know what to expect from me. You, on the other hand…" Bee shook his head in disgust and zipped his collar up higher. He had new black leather gloves to match his coat, with tiny gold stripes around the knuckles. _He looks like a teenage Goblin King in that getup_, Finn thought. He shook the thought away. It was too distracting.

"You push and pull and run around me. You get me off and then talk to me over breakfast like nothing happened. You've gotta stop doing that. I'm not a goddamned… mascot."

Finn's heart—_and my groin, he's beautiful as Baldur and lickable as candy_—thudded. He wondered if Bee even knew how delicious and sexy he looked in his black-and-gold jacket, his hair trimmed off his face, eyes blue as lasers, burning through the landscape, cutting through everything, cutting down every damned bit of his resolve. He looked like someone who was going to live forever, someone who could dance over the Leviathan's braces and kick in its teeth.

Something more had happened between Bee and the Goblin King than just a series of errands and a change in style. Finn didn't flatter himself that the change had come from leaning over the promise he'd made to Sarah. Bee's proposition and what followed the other night had been a symptom, not a cause. Something had shaken this larval creature out of the honeycomb and into the next stage of life. Something subtle, something strange. He was ripe and ready to gather rosebuds and strew cherries and dare to eat peaches. _And here I am, thumb figuratively up my butt while this jim dandy wants nothing more than to gather my literal rosebud. I'm being an idiot_.

"How long are you going to be mad about me for last night?" Finn asked.

"Forever," Bee said, but he smiled a little bit.

"Really?" Finn asked, tangling his leg with his, pressing his thigh against his. "Forever and ever and ever?"

"Yes," Bee said primly, raising his chin a notch.

"What if I'm really very sorry?" Finn breathed dangerously in his ear. "What if I'm ready to perform an act of contrition?"

"Our stop is next," Bee replied. "You won't have time to get on your knees."

"How'd you know our stop is next?" Finn asked with surprise.

"Because you're flirting with me. You'll have an escape route ready." Bee turned his laservision on Finn. Finn realized, with delight and fear, that Bee had made him blush. "I've got your number now, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. You should be careful."

_I don't know what happened, but somehow he's right. In the space of thirteen hours he's gone from being a glorified pet to a junior partner._ Finn grinned at him. The boy returned it with the icy condescending smile of an assassin princess. _And he thinks the Labyrinth is_ nice_, when it can do things like this to mortal men. When it can do things like you to me, Bee. Gods be good. You're so much more than I ever hoped for. _

* * *

**Next… Chapter Five: "The Devil"**

* * *

_Thanks to my beta, Frances Osgood!_

_The moment where nineteen-year-old Toby sees what he might have looked like if he'd been the Goblin Prince is pretty much a direct visual reference to Brian Froud's painting of baby Toby surrounded by goblins. Except Toby isn't a baby any more. Nope._

_ The phrases "bloom-down-cheek'd peaches," "peaches with a velvet nap," and "sweet to taste and sound to eye" are all from Rossetti's "Goblin Market," which you can bet Jareth has read and gotten a good laugh over. "Sweet to Tongue and Sound to Eye" is also the title of a Labyfic by futurejelly, which put these particular verses in my mind._

_ Those of you disappointed by lack of Sarah-Jareth smooches and sweaty snugglebunnies should check out TheRealEatsShootsAndLeaves "Color, Magic Color" to get your fix. Panda just finished "Short Stacks" as well, and if you haven't been eating them pancakes then there's something missing from your life._

_ When I'm not writing this fat 20-30 chapter epic, I'm reading LaraWinner's "Fragile" and blown away by how good it is. Laraaaaa! Updaaaaaaaaate! Pleeeeeeez!_

* * *

**Panda**: Your reviews are the best reviews ever. Please keep tossing me those cheesypoofs.

**Zayide**: To be fair, Sarah and Jareth were on their honeymoon and not particularly interested in anything but themselves. They were warned. They ignored the warning.

**Askeebe**: Bee is growing up right before our eyes. The Goblin King doesn't name him as family lightly.

**Jetredgirl**: Not much steam, but Finn's certainly basting in his own juices this chapter. *rimshot*

**Jalen**: He keeps calling her that because every time he does, she squawks. And that's funny enough to be worth the bruises.

**Fanny**: It's a French bedroom farce! Thank goodness at least Jareth is on Toby's side.

**radar wing**: I think Jareth's portrayed that way a bit in the film. Certainly he seems to resent it when he provokes responses he doesn't want. That final monologue… whew. I hadz a pity.

**Galileo**: Squee! I made Finn and this version of Toby! Original characters tend not to fare so well in Labyfic, but Finn seems to be thriving. I'm glad you like him.


	5. The Devil

**Chapter Five: The Devil  
**

* * *

**Author's Note: **The last quarter of this chapter contains some gruesome imagery and fantasy violence. Reader discretion is advised.**  
**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter Five:**

**"The Root of All Evil"—Abney Park**  
**"Wish"—Nine Inch Nails**  
**"Cry, Little Sister"—G. Tom Mac  
**

* * *

The music thumped a beat in his belly.

_Rise  
Rise  
Rise  
Fall deep from the Earth and rise…_

_…a voice in the echo of black Heaven_

_Rise_  
_Rise_  
_Rise_

_Finn, where are you?_ Bee called with all his heart, a heart made of fear, a fear rising,_ rising rising, an echo of**—**_

_No_! The song was like a spell, trying to capture the rhythm of his breath, the pattern of his thoughts. And his fear was attracting attention he couldn't afford. Pale faces dusted with ash turned to look at him, eyes blood-rimed and darting quick in the flickering darkness on the dance floor. He pushed his fear aside, let those glances part on him like flowing water.

* * *

"This is going to be just ridiculously dangerous," Finn had said. "It might be a good idea, Bee, if you didn't get involved at all."

"It's a two-man plan," Bee had said solidly. "You can't do it without me."

"Or we could just call it all off," Finn had said. "We need a midwife, but we don't need that particular midwife."

"We made that midwife a promise, though," Bee reminded him.

"… I'm afraid," Finn said blankly. His fingers paused over the drawing of their plan, fingertips pulling together as if to crumple it entirely up.

"Finn," Bee said pragmatically, as he came to sit on Finn's knee on the park bench. He touched his forehead to his, feeling the pleasant firmness of his horns. He looked in his eyes. At this close distance, they melded into one golden-brown pool. "We can do this. We can."

Bee had expected some clever quip, some retort, but instead Finn kissed him, beard scratching against his beardless chin, flavor of pepper and almonds and cheap beer on his lips. Finn's kiss was fearful and chaste, and Bee grabbed him hard at the place where his collarbone met his neck. "It _will_ work, Finn." He kissed him again, harder, feeling lust rise instead of courage. Transmittable, this feeling, in lips and hands and hot breath, because Finn's arms came around his back and urged him on, pressing him to his mouth harder. "Okay?" Bee asked. "Okay, Finn?" He slapped Finn's cheek gently.

"Okay," Finn replied, but with less enthusiasm than Bee had hoped for. He turned on his knee, rutting subtly against it, and pulled Finn's attention back to their schematics laid out on the park's chessboard.

"Let's go over the plan again," Bee said. He smiled as Finn's hands wrapped warm around his waist.

* * *

The light in the club should have been black, but to Bee it seemed all dusty sepia, the washed-out tones of a dead basement. And it smelled. It smelled like stale come and low hints of coppery blood and the sick high reek of alcoholic disinfectant. He wondered if anyone else could smell it. He wondered how many of the guests at this party were trying to get away, or had tried. And he wondered where the spider of this web kept her parlor. _I can see_, Bee thought, closing his eyes. _I can see things other people don't. I can see through anything. So why can't I see you, Finn? Where are you?_

* * *

Bee wasn't half impressed with the cheap bodega that was their last stop in a long day of long stops. It was in a dingier borough than Jollymaker's, and was consequently a lot less deep and a lot more dirty. This neighborhood was so sad it would need to climb a few rungs on the ladder before it could join Spanish Harlem. _Cheap and tacky_, Bee thought, looking around at the cartons of cigarettes and fake flower arrangements and scratch-tickets under plexiglass. _Tacky and superstitious_, he amended, seeing a few lit saints' candles on a makeshift altar near the cash register, and the dusty apothecary's jars of mushy-moldy looking herbs stacked on the backboard. Finn asked the cashier a question in staccato Spanish. Bee caught the word _bruja_, but nothing else. The woman hooked a thumb over to the back of the store without looking up from her inventory.

_Cheap and _dirty_ and ticky-tackaroo_, Bee thought. The floor was sticky under his shoes and there were fruitflies on the bananas. The door marked "Office" was open. A fat old woman in nurse's scrubs sat at the desk making notations in a small ledger.

"Miss Life?" Finn asked.

The woman looked up and evaluated them both carefully before snorting and turning back to her book. "Who's asking?"

"Your name has been mentioned in certain circles. Your skills have been noted and praised."

"You didn't answer my question," she said.

Bee squinted at her. There was something… odd about her. Something compelling.

Finn flourished the tail of his coat like the proudest robin redbreast. "Don't you have eyes? Can't you tell? Or is the Red Branch come down so far that you can't recognize one of its Brothers?"

"I recognize. I just have no idea why the Red Branch would come looking for me to ply my trade. Unless you boys have finally succeeded in turning your _culo_ into _coño_. What do you want with me, carefully nameless Brother of the Red Branch?"

Bee eased down his pack and quietly removed his sketchbook from the front pocket. Something about the eyes. Something strange. He propped one foot against the cinderblock wall and used his thigh as a desk.

"I've come on behalf of another, you've rightly guessed, gracious lady. A woman, a star among women, a jewel, a treasure."

"One of us?" she said, momentarily interested. She stared at Finn, then shook her head, jowls jiggling. "No. I would have heard before this. So who? Speak plainly. I'm running out of patience."

"A human woman," Finn said coaxingly. "The wife of the Goblin King."

She snapped her ledger closed and stood up. She seemed very tall, seven feet tall, eight, massive as a semi truck. "Collect your boy-toy and get out," she growled. "I know exactly who you are now, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. I know your reputation. I want nothing to do with your king."

"Our king!" Finn insisted.

"No, not mine. _Yours_. You should know, if you knew where to find me. I want no business with the _Hidalgos_. Not with the Goblin King, not with the King of Winter, not with any of them!" She seemed angry. She also seemed...afraid. Backed against the wall, big like the puffed back of a cat. Bee knew that fear. He understood it.

"Please," Bee said. "My sister sent us. _Mi hermana_. To get help. _Para obtener ayuda_. She wants a midwife." And then his high-school Spanish failed him. "Please," he said. "She's going to have a baby. A fae baby." He looked over at Finn for confirmation. Finn nodded. "She needs special help." Finn had impressed this last point upon them quite strongly before they came here, but hadn't explained why.

"Yes. She probably does." Miss Life seemed to shrink to normal proportions. "Don't we all need help." She crossed herself and muttered an incantation to some saint. And then she sat down again, exhausted by her outburst, and cupped her eyes in her hands. It was a strangely girlish gesture. "I can't. I can't. I won't!" she said, but she seemed to be talking to herself. "They're all thieves and killers." She drew her hands away and looked at them. Her eyes were luminous, wet, green. Not green like Sarah's, green like slime, like lightning bugs. "My Gift's for luck. This is what I get. So how bad is my luck?"

Finn took a seat opposite her in a folding chair. But Bee kept his perch against the wall, and kept sketching.

"Not so bad," Finn said kindly. "It's not so bad. The Queen is well and happy."

"Well and happy. Bespelled? Under enchantment? You, pale boy. Your sister, is she different than she used to be?"

Bee didn't look up from his sketch. Darker, harder lines were taking shape. It was rare that he couldn't capture the essence of a person or a creature in a few strokes, but Miss Life was a hard get. "She's not as sad as she used to be," he said with quiet meaning. "She was looking for him for a long time, I think."

Miss Life sighed. "My brother was like that. Tall, and beautiful, brown-skinned like your _compa_ here." She looked at Finn with sorrow and warning. "He went looking for his doom among the _Hidalgos_, and he found it."

"What happened to him?" Bee asked. The pressure he was putting on the pencil was hard enough to hurt his hand, as if he could dig the truth out if he pressed hard enough.

"This Gentrywoman, she cracked him open and sucked out his _vis_, his soul, like it was a tasty chunk of marrow. The _Hidalgos_, they do what they want, and what this one wanted was to eat my brother. And to kill my sisters and my mothers and my fathers when they went to rescue him. The ruin of my House. And now I'm the only one left."

"You could have come to one of us," Finn said kindly. "Any of the Houses would have been obliged to help you. There aren't that many of us, people like you and me. We would have taken you in. Or you could have come to the Labyrinth. The Goblin King isn't like them. He's… good. And he loves us, you know."

"That's such a lie," Miss Life spat. "Doesn't it fork your tongue to lie like that? My family is worse than dead, and where was _Rey_ _L__adrón__de Niños_ then? Nowhere. We're toys to them, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. Toys to _him_. Game pieces. Pawns in the great game they play. No. I've decided. Abduct some human doctor when your sister's time comes, and leave me out of it."

_There she is_, Bee decided_. I've got her_. He tossed his sketchpad onto the table between them.

He watched Miss Life look at the sketch. The jowled and wrinkled face, the bad teeth, the dull hair. But he'd captured a slim bar of something else, a view from a sliding peephole, of luminous eyes, the pointed tips of ears, youth and juicy vitality. She looked, and she touched her own face, as if remembering.

"You're the only one in your family left." Bee said gently. "Hiding here, never going anywhere but where your luck takes you, and then scurrying back to this grimy hole as soon as you can?" He shook his head. "Your afraid because you think this creature that hurt you and yours is still after you. But _we_ found you. Others can find you too. There's nowhere to hide."

She looked over at him, trembling. _The eyes. That's where the truth of her is, under this glamour_.

"I don't understand a lot of the ways you people do things, but I know you believe in taking care of your family." Bee crossed his arms. "I believe in that too. My sister wants a midwife. I bet you want something too. We can talk a trade." He could feel Finn desperately trying to catch his attention, but he kept them fixed on the young-old child-crone in front of him.

Bee kept his voice cool, but he felt a cruel smile beginning over his teeth. "Miss Life, have you considered _revenge_?"

"Yes," she said quietly. "I have considered revenge."

And the rest was all details.

* * *

"Why did you do that?" Finn exploded at him as they left the bodega and walked to their bus stop, lightly loaded up again with items Finn had wanted for their hunt. "Why did you make that offer?"

"Well you agreed to it," Bee said, winding his yo-yo, unperturbed.

"What choice did I have?" Finn asked. "Why, Bee?" He grabbed the boy and shook him.

"Chilly down," Bee said. "Do you think it's right that someone can come in and hurt people like that and no one does anything?" His string had unravelled; he wound it up again. "There's no justice for people like her. Didn't you say, didn't you say when you asked me to come away with you, that you were all about keeping things right? Protecting the weak? Well?" He spun out the yo-yo and reeled it back after making it sleep for a moment. "Are we heroes or just… bullies?"

"Heroes," Finn said, grasping his hair in exasperation. "We're heroes. But this is going to be like Cuchulain against all of Connacht."

"Eh?"

"David versus Goliath."

"Didn't David win? And with nothing more than a yo-yo." He swung it around-the-world and felt it snap back into his fingers.

"Sling. It was a sling. And that story was probably bullshit anyway. Gods be good, Bee!" Finn huffed and turned away, walking ahead of him. Bee stretched his legs to keep up. "She's probably House Crocus. Or was, when it existed. I've heard some bad rumors about them."

"Bad rumors?"

"They picked a fight with one of the Gentry from the Winter Court, and all got killed for their trouble."

Bee struggled to close the distance and caught up after a few scissor leaps. "You pick fights all the time."

"Yeah, but only ones I can win. The Gentry, honey-Bee, are ones with whom not to fuck. You know this. Would you pick a fight with the Goblin King?"

Bee thought about this. He remembered the weight of the peach under his hand. He remembered Jareth's expression when he'd thought Bee was going to defy him and steal from him. And he remembered Jareth's offer, and of what might-have-been. "I would if I had to," Bee said. "Finn." He pulled Finn up to a stop and snuggled in close. "I would if I had to." He tilted his face up and gave Finn his best beguiling look. "Don't be such a pussy."

"Cuchulain against all of Connacht and me without a Gae Bulga," Finn said.

"I've got your gay bulge right here," Bee said, grasping him through his pants. And they kissed, deep and hard, clutching at tongues like last straws.

* * *

It took the three days to finalize their plans. Bee had wanted to go full in, guns blazing, the very moment they concluded their meeting with the midwife, but Finn had explained how deeply impractical that was. "This won't be like anything we've done before," he had said, as they ate their dinner of remaindered lo mein and trashed packages of meatloaf dinner, just an hour past expiration, still warm. The weather wanted to snow but hadn't, and they spread their food over an empty chess table at the local park. "This will be more like…"

"Going down in a blaze of glory?" Bee suggested, slurping noodles.

"Eh. What's said is said, and done is done, and half a chance is more than none." He stole one of Bee's candied carrots.

"So why don't we rally a whole bunch of your family and just march in there and deal with her?" Bee asked. "Numerical superiority?" _And I'd like to meet your family_, Bee thought, _I'd really like to see this Red Branch you're always talking about_.

"There's no such thing as numerical superiority when it's ants versus boot," Finn said. "Well, conceivably there could be, but we can't muster those sorts of numbers."

"Well, you're magic. All the people I've met with you are magic. You're saying it's not enough?"

"I can use magic. Most of the Free People can use magic. But the Gentry? Fae, Rakshasa, Sidhe. They _are_ magic. Raw, wild magic governed by unstable personalities. No souls. No need for souls." He looked at the boy. "Your story-learning is ridiculously poor, considering who your sister is, but you seem to know your Bible, at least."

"Ten years of Sunday School," Bee said. "Want me to quote Leviticus?"

"_And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come._ The Revelation of St. John the Divine. But holy means _other_. The fae are to the Free People what angels were to Isaiah. Other, other, other."

Bee swallowed hard around the sudden dryness of his food. "They're angels? Gods?"

"Close enough for government work. You look pale. I guess you're finally starting to understand what you've gotten me into. So if we do this, we'll do it alone. No reason to drag anyone else into this when it can't make a difference to the outcome."

"We should have brought a bigger boat," Bee muttered.

"Bee, there's no boat bigger enough. Fortunately, we've got the right hooks. And we've got the right bait to land that shark."

"Me?" He couldn't help himself; he quailed at the idea.

"No." Finn stole his last carrot. "This time,_ I'm_ the bait."

* * *

The lair was a nightclub, thumping with bass and discordant screams in the dark. And the nightclub was a lair. And in the lair there was a predator.

_How doth the little busy Bee_  
_Improve each shining Hour,_  
_And gather Honey all the day_  
_From every opening Flower!_

_In works of Labour or of skill_  
_I would be busy too:_  
_For Satan finds some mischief still_  
_For idle hands to do._

_How doth the little crocodile  
Improve his shining tail,  
And pour the waters of the Nile  
On every golden scale!_

_How cheerfully he seems to grin,  
How neatly spreads his claws,  
And welcomes little fishes in  
With gently smiling jaws!_

* * *

"Okay, now look," Finn said on their third switchback through the same street. Finn had spent some of their precious and limited resources for a cab. Bee did, and saw the entrance to the club. It was like a mouth to some cavern, low to the ground, people clustered in line to get in.

"I see it," Bee said.

"That's the entrance," Finn said. They got out ten blocks away and set up their scout camp in the nearest park. "Once we get in, there'll be some inner sanctum, some core place where she lives. We'll have to find our way in deeper once we get inside."

* * *

The club was thick with people wearing paint and silk and chrome jewelry and corsetry that looked like torture devices. Bee kept his eyes open in the strobing lights, looking for that passage further in. He slid from one cluster of debauched body-mod aficionados to another, grasping for any changes in the texture of the air, the light. And then the light began to change, became the ugly orange of sodium lamps.

_I'm crossing over into the other, the further, a reality that isn't quite this one_. He shivered in his jacket and felt again for the precious weapons he carried with him. _Finn, I'm coming for you. Hang on._

* * *

"So here's where we have weapons superiority," Finn said, gathering supplies from the bodega under Miss Life's watchful eyes. "Salt," he said, pulling out four indigo canisters. "Cold iron," he said, laying down two paring-knives. "And her name." He held out the scrap of receipt where Miss Life had scrawled the name in question. Finn had rewritten it phonetically several times. _Oh-NO-skill-is. Oh-no-SKELL-yes. Ono-skull-YAYS_. Miss Life had cautioned, and Finn had reiterated, that a name like this was too dangerous to repeat out loud, for fear of attracting the bearer's attention before they were ready for her.

"Which one is it?" Bee had asked in dismay.

"The first. Probably." Bee was not reassured by her reply.

"The salt will bind in the four cardinal directions. Her name will bind her above and below. And the iron… that fixes the center. There are other ways to do it, but for our purposes, this is the safest. But we'll have to coax her down into some sort of physical form first. She'll want to see me. She'll want to touch me." Finn looked at Miss Life. "Just like she did with your family. And when we leave here, it would be really smart for you to immediately go to the Labyrinth and put yourself in the service of the Goblin King and Queen Sarah."

"How do I guarantee that my services have been paid for before I go?" Miss Life objected.

"Look, sister," Finn's voice was uncommonly sharp. "If we win, you've been overpaid. And if we lose, you're going to want to be elsewhere for the fallout. Underground isn't a bad destination. Unless you want to walk this bargain back?"

Miss Life had barely hesitated. "No. I want her dead."

* * *

On the third night, Finn had declared them ready. "Tomorrow night, we'll do this."

"Why not tonight?" Bee asked.

"Two reasons," Finn said. "One, it's Tuesday and you have a phone call to make. Two, I want to scout out the place in person first. She'll notice me. That's what we want, to stir the pot a little. She's an old one. She'll be cautious and curious when she notices me. She'll be looking to see if I'm armed and alone. I can't wear my coat or my swords. It'll be like a neon sign. 'Hello, my name is Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. I come from Red Branch, prepared to die.' But if she thinks I'm just a random one, all alone, she'll be eager and intemperate if I come back. She'll want to collect me. Or maybe attempt a seduction." He applied some eyeliner and stripped off his shirt, knotting it around his hips. His blue tattoos and his skin seemed to blaze through his undershirt. He could pass for a clubber, but Bee couldn't imagine this fae creature being cautious once she saw him. Finn was beautiful, and without his weapons or his coat, far too vulnerable for a predator to pass up. He shook his head in disapproval.

"We shouldn't split up," Bee said. "You aren't going in without me. What if she tries to snatch you right when she sees you?"

Finn had ducked his head and smiled to himself. "You're definitely right. We shouldn't split up."

"Right. Good. Okay." Bee dug his phone card out of his bag and walked the two blocks to the nearest working pay phone. His fury knew absolutely no limit when he returned after a pleasant fifteen minute chat and saw that Finn had gone ahead and left without him. But as the night wore on and Finn didn't return, the fury turned to worry and then to a loneliness so intense that he'd wrapped himself up in Finn's long wool coat, for the comfort of the smell of him.

Morning found him cold and alone in the park, but a note had slithered out of the red depths of Finn's coat, unseen until daylight.

_If Im not back by 10, abort mishin. Go to J—, ask for help. Don't Bee Stupid. Bee Smart. I love you. –F.V.  
_  
"God dammit, Finn!" Bee had yelled, startling the pigeons and drawing the unwanted attentions of a few retirees who had braved the November cold for their chess addiction. Noticed, out-of-place, alone, Bee had gone about the business of gathering their combined possessions, caching them in newspapers and a garbage bag inside a dumpster, and deciding how best to go in like the cavalry for a rescue.

_I wish I'd brought one of his swords_, Bee thought to himself. But he couldn't work them. The bronze blade and the iron one threw off his balance when he tried wearing them. It took him three attempts just to draw the iron blade out of the scabbard, and his wrist had trembled under the weight when he'd awkwardly pulled it free. _Your way then, Finn. Always your way!_

"You asshole," Bee cursed, and shoved the tears out of his eyes with his palms.

* * *

The club had opened to him like a flower to Bee. No one stopped him, no one saw him. He wandered until he felt something in the texture of the world change. And then there weren't any more people, any more crowd, only a dusty hole with medical waste and rusty implements tossed aside, and mannequins which were breathing. It looked like an anti-drug PSA, but effective, because Bee felt that whatever drug was being sold here was one he definitely didn't want to try. Because it was beautiful in its horridness. Bones and dust, nadir-space of flesh and art, and a stage, and an empty throne made of chrome and skin.

There was a circling pulsing golden light, a wheel within a wheel, that descended from the depths of the ceiling, flashing in the eyes, illuminating nothing. It floated down, aggressive and sharp-edged, and stopped. And the chair on stage was suddenly occupied by a beautiful white woman who had pits of darkness where her eyes ought to have been. Bee wasn't sure why exactly he felt it was a woman—hairless, flat-chested, gold needles pressed through her cheeks and ears—but it felt feminine. This was the thing they'd been looking for. This was the one who murdered people for fun.

_It_, he though. _More an it_. His belly trembled with sickness. Power seemed to flow off her in molten waves, and every wave was a type of malevolence. It wasn't a person, it was a presence. _Fae_, Bee thought. _Fae. Like the Goblin King. But he's so human, and she is_ not.

He would never mistake the Gentry for anything else magical or metaphysical after this. Never. Never again. He wanted to hide. He wanted to be a thousand miles away from here. He felt his balls struggling to pull into his stomach, and the rest of him wanted to follow, curl up in a ball and pop him inside-out of this world. And he would have run, but there was Finn, his belt buckled not around his waist but binding his arms back, leashed to a horned effigy to the Gentrywoman's left. There was Finn, shivering and ducking behind the gypsum figure, as if to avoid the attentions of the devil in this Hell.

_Bee I__nvisible_, Bee reminded himself. He could feel Finn's fear, and he stepped reluctantly into his wake, heart thundering like his, breath coming in silent gasps.

The _she_, the _it_, she watched the slow shuffle of her courtiers. Bee recognized a few of them; they existed simultaneously in this space and in the club-space, ash-smeared, scarified, dead-eyed, willingly defiled and without identity or will. Here, they were all marionettes, held up by strings of sinew and dry veins, hanged men with animal masks. The Gentrywoman's black eyes danced across each figure, and Bee realized with anger that she was playing with Finn, pretending to have forgotten him, pretending not to remember he was there. And then she laughed, belly arching, rubber apron falling decadently between spread white thighs. Her laughter smoothed the edges of the room into gritty chaos. And Finn cowered like a whipped dog.

Bee carefully counted thirty-two heel-toe steps backward, breathing only every third step. Unseen, invisible to this thing who had eyes only for Finn.

"Mutt," she called him. "Pretty mongrel puppy. Shall we play a game?" Her voice had rumors of other notes, unheard screams, beauty, cacophony. Bee wanted to put his hands over his ears.

Finn refused to answer. He turned his head away and pulled to the length of his tether, away from her. The cuff and the leash seemed to be made of leather thongs and … hair. Bee lowered his eyes and listened. One wrong move, and he would be noticed. Once noticed, he would be dead.

Bee walked slowly to the left, scattering grains of salt from his pockets as he went. Small step by small step, never running, always turning. He mastered his breath, which wanted to gasp with panic. He wanted not to breathe at all through his nose, because the bad smell that had curled his nostrils in the club was stronger here in the center of the nest, a rotten nightmare of spoiled meat and coppery-sweet blood, murder victims half-buried in wet plaster and papier-mache. Still, he kept walking, making the circle that would trap this inhuman creature, and hopefully get them both out of here alive.

"I'll engage her attention," Finn had said during their rehearsal, choreographing every move until Bee knew it with his body waking and sleeping. His adrenal glands were pumping out enough juice to lift a car, but he didn't falter. This was still the plan. Finn had engaged her attention. Bee's job was to be unnoticed, to _bind_.

"Mongrel puppy," she murmured in lover's tones. "Half-breed. The Judex made you. His signature is on you. Anyone of the brethren can see that." She kicked up her feet in joy as she stood. She had shoes like asses' feet, hooved and bloody. She came to Finn and grabbed him by the hair. "But I can improve on his art. I wonder how I'll improve on you?" She dragged his strappy t-shirt up to his throat, his pants around his hips, and fondled him dispassionately. One of her servants, zombie marionette, tottered over to her, gave her a stone-flake knife. Three more approached and held Finn still. Bee, horrified, almost missed a breath in his camouflaging pattern. He thought she was castrating him, and took his smothered sobs for stoic endurance. But his circle took him a few steps further, and he could see she was tracing the outline of one of the tattoos on Finn's hips, cutting shallowly and precisely, lifting off one perfect micrometer of skin, slapping it like decoupage on the body of the nearest servant.

"The Goblin King has strange aesthetics. But he went too far, making you and your kind." She sniffed at Finn's blood and drew back his eyelids one by one. "Too much like us, and too much like Men. I'm here to make revisions. And you're so very textual." The knife cut around the edge of another tattoo. Not deep, not enough to do more than pierce the first layer of skin, strip it, slap it against her waiting servants like wet onionskin. Not enough to seriously injure or maim, just enough to hurt and humiliate.

"Is that what you did to the rest of them?" Finn said through clenched teeth. He jerked his head defiantly at her attendants. "Did you revise _them_?"

"Golden-eyed golden-skin, that's my charter. That's my nature. Shall I dig deeper, or are you ready to give over your flesh and play my game?"

"You've killed them," Finn said, gasping against the dead meat of the arms that kept him restrained. "You've killed my brothers and sisters. This world belongs to us, and you've killed us." Bee could see his eyes, all golden, attention all on the Gentry. He hoped Finn couldn't see him either. This needed to work.

"All mortal flesh dies. Only we live forever. And if you cannot live forever, how could you ever be one of us?" She threw her knife aside and grasped Finn again, one hand in his hair, one grabbing his crotch. Those strong pale hands squeezed and pulled like she was husking corn, and Finn arched and gave the first scream of pain Bee ever remembered him giving. She paid the scream no mind; she inhaled the scent of his open mouth and licked her lips.

Bee had finished his circuit; he wasn't going to let this go on for a single minute more. He pulled out the paring-knife from his breast pocket and cast it into the circle of salt.

"I name you Onoskelis," Bee said, voice cracking. "And I bind you by your name."

The Gentrywoman stared at him. Finn stared at him too. Then she laughed, and Bee felt terror overwhelm him. It hadn't worked. It hadn't. She surged forward on her tiptoe animal shoes, grinning wide enough to split her face, prepared to rip him into pieces and probably add him to her gallery of art.

Then she reached the perimeter of salt, and was cast back into the circle Bee had made. Her feet stamped and her hands clawed as she shouted obscenities at Bee in every language. "You dare!" she shrieked.

Finn had wasted no time after his first surprise. He jammed his feet against the stone effigy and used the leverage to break his leash and break out of his captors' arms. They seemed deadened, stilled. Their flesh-and-blood strings began to fray, one by one, with the snapping sounds of wet harpstrings. They slouched over into the dirt, unmoving, once they fell.

The Gentrywoman shadowed him around the perimeter, striking out at it with sparks, testing for weakness. Bee ignored her; his attention was for Finn now. "You okay?" he asked him, gently drawing his clothes back into place, unbuckling and unwinding the tangled weave of his bonds.

"My fucking 'jones," Finn said through gritted teeth, cupping his crotch.

"Yeah, well, if you hadn't snuck off last night then your balls wouldn't hurt today!" Bee embraced him, arms around his neck. "Don't ever do that again. Never-ever-ever. Promise me, Finn!"

"Ow! Yes. I promise. I promise." He nuzzled his cheek against Bee's ear. "I'll never go off without your permission again." He tucked Bee under his arm. Some blood was seeping through his pants, but just a little. Bee helped him limp forward to face the Gentrywoman. Bee handed him the second carton of salt. Stiff-legged with pain, Finn kept his golden eyes on his target as he cast more salt through the circle. One slashing drift, two, three, and she was bound inside a triangle inside the circle. Three more, a hexagon. She cursed at them, but then changed her tone. She began to beg. Bee did as Finn did, and ignored her voice. Line after line of salt spiraled in, narrowing the trap.

"Stay!" Finn said, half-crying and half-laughing. "Stay! Good dog." He staggered a little, and Bee caught him under the shoulders again.

Finally, the Gentrywoman was left with no place to stand except on the cold iron, and nowhere for her arms to go except above her head, as if she were rolled in an invisible carpet. She howled in rage, but then with pain. Her hooves sizzled and gave up smoke. She seemed to… begin to melt. That was the only way Bee could conceive of it. It wasn't gruesome, only slightly disgusting. A relief, like popping a zit. _What a world, what a world_.

Onoskelis, the fae, was quickly reduced to a puddle of bubbling golden liquid. Finn directed Bee over to one of her slaves. Finn crouched over him, and raised the eyelids of the broken puppet, but flinched back in disgust. The eyes of the creature were gone, replaced with wads of carbuncled stone. He went to each and every one in turn, and was likewise disappointed.

"They're dead?" Bee asked.

"I think so. There's no vitality. No eyes. I can't do anything for them." Finn crashed his fist into the dirt. "Damn her!" He looked up, eyes mournful. "It's always like this. The Gentry can do whatever they want to us, and nobody fights back. Nobody cares!"

"I care," Bee said. "What do we do now? If there's nothing else, I'd kinda like to get the hell out of here."

"Me too. But first we cauterize the wound she's left in the world," Finn said grimly. He slouched up with Bee's help, and walked to the very center, the bubbling golden pool, alone and unassisted. "Did you bring the lighter fluid? And the lighter? I left mine behind."

Finn squirted the entire bottle into the remains of the Gentrywoman, and then touched the flame to her. She went up in a column of black smoke and fire.

"If you come back again, Onoskelis, may you come back as one of us," Finn intoned gravely. "Come back kindly, or come back never again."

They watched the fire go up into the endless black nothingness, the echo of a black Heaven. The room shivered once, twice, and began to crumble slightly around the edges.

"I want to go home, Bee," Finn finally said. "I want my father."

"What, the Goblin King?"

"No," Finn winced. "Not him. I want my _real_ father. I want to go back to Red Branch."

"Okay, Finn," Bee said. "Okay." They stumbled out together as the inner sanctum of the Gentrywoman crackled into dust.

* * *

**Next... Chapter Six: "Temperance"**

* * *

_Thank you to my beta, FrancesOsgood, for her help and support._

Various references made here. "You're going to need a bigger boat."**—** Jaws. "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." **—**The Princess Bride. "How Doth the Little Busy Bee..."**—**Isaac Watts. "How Doth the Little Crocodile"**—**Alice in Wonderland. If there are any I forgot to mark out for sheer negligence, please let me know in the comments.

_Onoskelis's name and nature can be found in The Key of Solomon. She's real, and she's not doing anything here that she hasn't done a thousand times before. For a nice series of stomach-turning visuals for her lair, please enjoy the video for Bowie's "The Hearts Filthy Lesson," which directly inspired them._

_Well? Are you not entertained? Please leave me a comment and don't skimp. It sustains my art._

* * *

**Panda**: Jareth owns Finn and would have given him to Toby. Jareth is also concerned about Finn's good opinion of him. The two motivations are not mutually exclusive, as we'll learn in the next chapter. Jareth can be a good guy, but he's not exactly a nice guy.

**Jetredgirl**: I want a lock of his hair!

**brylcream** **queen**: Thank you so much. He's a challenging 'voice' and it's gratifying to hear I've gotten him right.

**Askeebe**: Bee's not above being sexually manipulative when he thinks he knows what's best. Silly Bee.

**irgroomer**: PHRASING!

**Jalen**: I'm glad you like Finby, because this chapter is nothing but.

**Kwizzle**: Again, this is perhaps the best compliment a Labyfic writer can get. No sign of dem pants and people still enjoy it? Excellent!

**Zephrbabe**: Yeaaaah, that may be at issue later.


	6. Temperance

**Chapter Six: Temperance**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter Six:**

**"No One Is to Blame" —Howard Jones**  
**"Bring Me to Life" –Evanescence**  
**"Show Me How to Live"—Audioslave**

* * *

Sarah stretched her arms above her head until her shoulders cracked. She'd been click-clacking at the typewriter for hours and could feel it all the way up her sides. What the mechanism needed was oil, and rather than summon it herself, she thought she would find Jareth and make him get it for her. He enjoyed taking things apart and reassembling them; he'd serviced the old Hermes 3000 last time by turning it into and exploded diagram of itself with a flick of his wrist, and assembling it again just as quickly, leaving the dust behind. That was a trick she wanted to see again. And she was lonely for him, which was all the reason she really needed to go find him.

She looked at Yimmil and Sir Didymus, snoozing together against Ambrosius' side by the fireplace. Sarah tiptoed over the shambles of the Scrabble board and their empty cups of mulled wine. She'd leave the entourage behind. Jareth was likely in the throne room, though he might also be in the library or on the battlements or in his private rooms. There was no telling exactly, but the Castle would be helpful and direct her to the right path eventually. And if not, it would be a fun adventure—at least until Egg's weight on her kidneys made her need a bathroom. There were thousands of rooms in the castle, Jareth had informed her, but only four bathrooms. Lately, this was becoming a problem.

She grabbed a thick blue throw off the nearest chair as she snuck out, shoes barely bending on the stone floor. It was cold in the Castle, though her rooms were always cozy and warm. The cheery fire never seemed to need tending; burnt down to coals by bedtime, and flickering back to life again by the time she woke. But she slept better and warmer if Jareth slept beside her, and last night he hadn't been in the mood. He had been brooding and surly, and she had told him to go for a flight and shake off his temper. And he had obeyed—transforming at the third running step, happy as a prisoner set free. She opened the window for him, and had the pleasure of watching the flicker of his white wings in the moonlight as he did midair dives and barrel rolls and triple-Salchows for her amusement—or whatever the owl equivalent of these maneuvers were—but then he had flown out of sight and not returned at all until late in the morning.

Whatever problem was eating him, he hadn't wanted to talk about it. He'd helped her dress in silence in the morning, condescended to take a few morsels of food from her hands, and had disappeared again shortly afterward.

_There will be some changes after you arrive, Egg_, Sarah thought, resting her hands on her belly. _For one, I won't have a shelf to put my tea-mug on. For another, your father will need to unburden himself to me more than he does. _Sarah had asked to take a hand in some of the logistics of getting the Goblin City through Winter, but Jareth sidestepped her requests. He wanted her buttoned up in her dresses and bolted into her velvet box. It had been nice, back when she was uninformed about the situation, never being obliged to worry about anything more important than how to use her last three letters on a triple word score, but lately it had become boring and frustrating. Hence the writing, and hence her occasional desire to play truant from her non-routine. Like now. _Sneaky, sneaky Sarah, having an adventure!  
_  
She moved silently through the Castle. She could hear the business of goblins and other guests and other latecome residents to this sanctuary, but didn't hear Jareth's voice among them. Windows which had previously been crude holes open to the air had been glassed over, but there were still drafts. She followed the strongest of these and discovered the great chained doors of the Castle were wide open, with a goblin army's worth of slush tracked down the entrance hall. Sarah grumbled to herself as she pushed the doors closed and wondered just exactly who had come to visit or stay. _He'll be in the throne room with whoever-it-is,_ Sarah thought. _Renewing vows of fealty or receiving instructions on where to go. That's where I'll find Jareth_.

The trail of snow and water indeed led to the throne room, and Sarah congratulated herself on her brilliant deductive powers. She could hear what was going on before she could see inside, which wasn't unusual. Goblins had a gift for mayhem and Jareth had a tendency to enable them. What _was_ unusual were the sounds of the conversation coming from Jareth's frathouse court. She could hear two voices. One, Jareth's, superior and cruel. Another, a woman's afraid. The snickering background chorus of the goblins in residence had a sinister and unkind tone. Jareth was bullying someone. The goblins were teasing her. And whoever she was, she was upset and afraid and trying to hide it.

_Well, this seems familiar_, Sarah thought, as she crept up to the lip of the throne room's doorway, shamelessly eavesdropping. Jareth's mocking drawl set her teeth on edge. She felt fourteen again, with the full force of the Goblin King's contempt bearing down on her. _"Sarah, go back to your room. Play with your toys and your costumes." _She wondered who was getting the performance this time, and strained to make out his words over the sounds of Jareth's goblin amen-corner.

"When you were a child, you had your mothers to teach you better manners. But I seem to remember that even then they had to force you to bow your head to me. Haven't you learned anything?"

"I've learned _plenty_, Goblin King." It _was_ a woman's voice, strong and spitfire.

"So you're ready to swear your fealty to me, is that it? Is that why you're here, little one?"

"I was sent here to see Queen Sarah," the woman said. "I was _invited_."

"Oh, were you?" Jareth sneered. "Not by me." The goblins tittered with cruel good humor.

Sarah decided that Jareth's dubious qualities of mercy were most definitely strained, and entered into the throne room.

The whitewashed clockwork giant, Humongous, was standing in the darkened throne room holding a woman up by the scruff of her coat the way a person would hold a naughty kitten. _Which explains all the snow tracked in_, Sarah thought. Nobody saw her; all eyes were fixed on this ludicrous passion play. Jareth, dressed in dark blue wool with a crimson silk redingote, amulet wrapped high against his collar, seemed to be relishing his inhospitality. The woman, in frumpy coat and thick boots and a series of long mufflers wound around her head, was kicking out at the goblins who crowded around her. Many more goblins and chickens and pigs and bats peeked out from the draperies of the new double throne, or from the murder-holes and passageways and the pit. Snowflakes and afternoon light filtered in from the wide open oculi, gentling no impressions.

"I invited her," Sarah said, stepping forward into the dank room. She rapped on Humongous's side. "Put her down," Sarah said, shouting up at the driver.

"My lady wife. Glorious! What, no attendants?" He sprang up from his nearly prone position on the throne. He was wearing black gloves and had his silver-tipped riding crop with him. He was definitely having a bad day if he was mixing blues with blacks.

"HUuUuu-mOnNN!" the driver rumbled, disagreeing with her orders.

"I don't care if she's a.. fraggin' aardvark. Put her down! Now!"

"Let her down, but don't let her go," Jareth informed the driver, and maneuvered himself so he was between Sarah and their visitor. "If you invited her, you can tell me her name. Can't you then?" He tapped the butt of his crop under her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes.

Sarah scowled at him, hating his condescending tone_. How far are you going to push this, Jareth? _She knocked his crop aside.

Jareth ignored the gesture. "No? Don't know who she is? Well, she _is_ in disguise. Let's strip off all this glamour and see if you recognize her." He summoned a crystal and threw it at the woman. It burst against her chest in a shower of glitter. "Eh? Eh, Sarah?"

The woman, whoever she was, shielded herself from the abrasive glitter. She had seemed oldish and fattish, though it was hard to tell under all those clothes and scarves and hat, but after Jareth had scoured her, she was young, and tall, darker than Finnvah, cinnabar skin paled by weak winter light. Sarah hadn't realized until now how lonely she'd been for women's faces, human faces. And there she was, looking up at Sarah through the powdery sparkles that coated her eyelashes. Long neck, pointed chin, long pointed ears, long broad nose, smooth brow interrupted only by a strange vertical scar. Sarah tried to place her ethnicity. West Indes, Spanish Harlem, or perhaps India. Impossible to tell. Sarah smiled tentaviely at her. _I hope she really is what she seems_, she thought. _I hope… maybe she'll stay_.

"I apologize for my husband's behavior," Sarah said to her gently. The goblins paused in their teasing.

"I'm used to it," she shrugged.

"Jareth, I did invite her. By proxy." She raised her voice to include the woman in the conversation. "If she can give the name of the proxy and her profession, then everything is fine."

"I assure you, you're mistaken, Sarah. Everything is _not_ fine." He wrapped his hands around her, protective and possessive, and turned so they could both look at their visitor together. Egg gave her a vicious kick, and Sarah sincerely hoped Jareth felt it. These days she was kicking for two. "Well?" he snapped at the bundle of coat and scarf and hat and carpetbag who trembled under Humongous's restraining hand.

"I was sent by Vercingetorix, Red Branch," she said proudly. "My name is—" she looked at Jareth and averted her eyes. "My name is Miss Life."

"Is it?" Jareth said dangerously.

"Shiprah Serendipity. Called 'Tee.' From House Crocus. But you knew that, Elder. I'm the midwife."

"Midwife?" Jareth seemed taken aback. "Midwife?" He looked down at Sarah. "What do you need a midwife for? I've read all six books!"

"You read six copies of What to Expect When You're Expecting, Jareth."

"Well? So? I wanted to see if the endings were different."

"You really do need my services," Tee said with disdain. Sarah admired her gumption. She kept her shoulders back, wearing the weight of Humongous's grip like a privilege.

"What I need from _you_, young _Tee_, is—" But before Jareth could get fully wound up again, he was interrupted.

"My lady? My lady!" Sir Didymus yapped, jogging into the throne room. Sarah was so glad to see him that she could have kissed him. His timing was perfect. "I woke from a most shameful sleep and found thou hadst absconded!"

"Oh, good," Jareth shouted, brandishing his crop. "Everyone's here now! Form a line that I might beat myriad asses withal, beginning with your eloquent but irresponsible guard. Verily! Forsooth!"

Mocking and threatening Sir Didymus taxed Sarah to near the utmost limit of her patience. But Jareth was determined to dig for every red cent. "Or maybe I'll begin with you, Sarah. Did you send _my_ Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix to bring _her_ into my kingdom, and without even asking _me_? What's next? Salt pie? Nailgun massage?"

Sarah snatched the crop out of his hand and escaped his arms while he was distracted in trying to snatch it back. "Sir Didymus, please escort Tee to my rooms." She kicked Humongous. "_You_ can go back to your post and don't forget to close the door behind you next time. You're letting all the heat out. As for the rest of you—" she cast an evil eye over the goblin horde, "Grab your livestock and _scatter_. The King and I are about to have words."

Everyone looked at her. Nobody stirred.

"Move it!" Sarah said with drill-sergeant snap. "Now!" Gratifyingly, everyone did, sober and fearful.

And then she was alone with Jareth, who looked truculent and completely undaunted. "Well?" he asked in haughty tones, nose in the air, hands on his hips. "Explain yourself. Bringing outsiders into my home? Giving me commands in front of my subjects? It defies reason, but I'm sure you'll justify yourself somehow."

She remembered what her father had always done when she was in a snit. He would let her rant and rage and then explain the situation to her after she'd calmed down. This was generally effective, and she always did the same thing for Jareth…

…which was why she was surprised to find herself swinging his riding crop against the arm of the throne and then breaking it over her knee, leather plaits unravelling, shouting incoherently the entire time, lacking all good sense and ready to tear out his hair by the roots.

"Are you finished?" Jareth asked her with towering superiority.

"No! _Bring me more of your shit to break!_" Sarah screeched, angry tears blurring her vision.

He whipped off his surcoat and bowed as he presented it to her in a parody of chivalry. Sarah took it between her hands and tried to rip it. No use. The fabric was thin but well-sewn. But Jareth kept his bow, mocking her in every line of his body, so she bit down on the thin garment until it tore enough for her to rip it into two pieces. She stamped on the ruin for good measure, seething at him. "More!" Sarah shouted.

Arching an eyebrow, he leaned over and picked up one of the earthenware jugs of goblin grog. Sarah hefted it and threw it against the wall. It crashed in a thousand dripping pieces, which was very satisfying. By the time they were joined by the smithereens of a plate and a cup, he was sneaking an amused smile. He picked up the last of the tableware in reach and smashed it for her.

"Do you feel better?" he asked.

"I'm still mad at you!" she wrung her fists. "Those aren't your subjects. They're mine too! This is my kingdom too!" Her voice hissed, and she gave him the lowest blow she could manage. "You made sure of that, didn't you?" The final run, the final quest, the meeting of people and the eating of fairy fruit and the absorption of fae magic… in preparation to turn the kingdom over to her, to bequeath it at his death.

Jareth winced; the blow had struck hard.

"How dare you disrespect me in front of them! And how dare you treat the midwife like that! I wouldn't be surprised at all if she decided to leave me here _alone_. And with no help but you!" She burst into loud and ugly sobs.

"Sarah…" Jareth said, uncomfortable. He tried to embrace her but she put up a fight. "Please," he said, now sounding slightly desolate. "Please?" Still angry, she let him pet her, nestling her in, warming her ears and her fingers. "How was I to know you'd sent for her, Sarah? Her? How was I to know she wasn't an assassin or a spy sent to hurt you or me or our baby? You didn't tell me!" He gathered up as much of her as he could, running a thick coil of her hair over and over through his hand.

"She's one of the new people, isn't she?" Sarah snuffled resentfully. "A fae and human mix, like Finnvah."

"Another reason not to welcome her with open arms. She's made no oaths of fealty to me. She's dangerous."

"But maybe she has a clue, Jareth! This baby… it's not going to be quite human, is it? It'll be more like… Tee, or Finn, than like you or me." She pressed Egg against him. "Finnvah picked her, Jareth. He wouldn't have picked just anyone."

He tried to work up a scowl, but it failed. "You're right. Finnvarrah isn't careless with you. But you could have asked." He sighed. "Haven't I tried to give you everything you want? You could have asked."

"You're right," Sarah said, rubbing her cheek against the laces of his shirt and the hard skin-warm smoothness of his amulet. "I should have asked. I'm sorry."

"Foolish girl," he said fondly, and kissed her gently.

"The right words here are 'I'm sorry too, Sarah,'" she replied with a little heat.

"I'm sorry too, Sarah. What am I sorry for?" He tugged her hair gently and looked down at her.

"For not talking to me. I need to know what's going on. I don't have it in me to blindly obey you. You have to talk to me. You have to explain things to me. You can't keep me in the dark." She pinched his ear. "I'm your helpmeet, Jareth. I'm your partner. I'm the Queen."

"Things would be much simpler if your wedding vows had included 'to obey,'" he mused. He closed his eyes as her grip on his lobe became a gentle caress. He moved away after a moment and offered her his arm. "Come with me, then, Queen Sarah. You've commanded me to share. I have something to share with you."

* * *

"Holy shit," Sarah said, disgusted and surprised. "What the hell is that?"

"It's a message," Jareth said, also disgusted.

Sarah reached out to touch it, and Jareth pulled her hand back. "Don't," he said.

He had brought her to his private rooms, the ones with the trompe l'oeil landscapes that seemed to move, the room Sarah never entered without his express permission. She hadn't seen the interior of this private space in weeks. Before, it had been a dream of Summer. Now Winter had come even into Jareth's personal retreat. The trees were bare, the fruit-trees on the wall bearing nothing but shriveled pips, and the blanket of summer wisteria over the gray velvet couch had become a bank of snow-white fur. The crescent-moon lampstand was coated with silver icicles. Only the waterfall pond seemed unchanged, wafting steam over everything. Jareth had opened one of the little doors hidden in the landscape of the paintings and brought out a burlap bag. Carefully, not touching the contents, he had drawn the bag out and open over this message, this art, this thing.

It was a narrow cylinder of ice, about a foot tall, tinged red. A barbie-doll was trapped in the center, floating upside-down in an eternal swan-dive, arms raised above her head, brown hair obscuring her face. She had been roughly beheaded, and her tiny plastic arms and legs jutted out into stumps at the head and the foot of the column. No hands, no feet. And blood. The red… that was blood.

"Is that supposed to be me?" Sarah asked, shocked. _Of course it's me. Of course. It's a message for Jareth. It's a message from the King of Winter. This is what he intends to do to me, for saving Jareth's life._ "Where did you find it?" Sarah asked. She shrank into Jareth's arms, horrified and disgusted, and wishing with just a tiny bit of her heart that she'd left well enough alone, left all this for Jareth to manage. _Too late now_. He held on to her tightly.

"I found it two days ago, out in the perimeter. On the very border. In the broken passage. You know where."

_Yes. The place where we took our last chance_, Sarah thought. "Did you find it by itself, or was there more to it?"

Jareth paused, keeping something back. "Jareth," Sarah warned.

"It was surrounded by a circle of thirteen fairies. Toby and I obviously didn't manage to collect all of them. Dead ones, decapitated, stuck in the snow like little candles. Their hands and feet had been cut off. There were more bodies. Perhaps twenty or so. they'd been… mutilated. Deformed. I can't quite describe it. They weren't part of the … message."

"So John Company thinks he can threaten you by threatening me."

"And brutalizing my subjects." Jareth's voice was bitter. "I swear to Heaven, if I could kill the King of Winter, I would."

"You let me worry about that," Sarah said. She twined Jareth's hands in hers.

"Concordat," Jareth said. "No monarch can do violence to another. Not directly. The King of Winter assumes our marriage is morganatic. He must not think you have any power of your own." He rested his hand over Egg gently. "He's clever, but he's very much mistaken."

"He's clever but not very smart," Sarah agreed. "It's a nasty message, but he's revealed at least three things he didn't intend to."

"Oh?"

Sarah smiled grimly. She was good at puzzles. She was the best. This message was a puzzle, and a fairly obvious one. "One, he can't get inside the Labyrinth himself, or he would have left this directly on our doorstep, not outside. The borders are holding. It'll be your job to try to strengthen them, in every precinct."

"What do you think I've been doing?" Jareth complained, but Sarah shushed him with a finger over his lips.

"Two, we know for certain that he doesn't currently have any spies or agents working here."

"Unless young Tee is a spy or an agent." He kissed her fingers and then nipped them.

"Yes, well I understand now why you were so nasty to her, even if I don't excuse it."

"House Crocus worships me as a god, but Tee has always had a rebellious streak," Jareth agreed. "Nothing's so rebellious as blasphemy. The third thing?"

"Hm?"

"The third thing, Sarah."

"It follows from the second thing," Sarah said, looking at the ice sculpture closely. "The King of Winter doesn't know about the baby. Otherwise he would have made an allusion to it. The doll's abdomen cut out, blood on the thighs, something. Something specific to frighten and threaten us with. He doesn't know."

Jareth's brow smoothed out. "You don't think so?"

"No. The only people who know about the baby are my family and the Labyrinth's residents. Maybe not even those. Maybe they think I'm just fat," Sarah said, patting Egg. "You've kept me well sheltered. Some of the goblins must know I'm pregnant, but none of them have gone telling tales. Your kingdom is loyal to you. That's good. Knowledge is power. Imagine all the other things that the King of Winter doesn't know? They'd fill a book." She avoided looking at the message any more, and felt a surge of confidence and well-being.

"I suppose now you want to go interview our newest resident?" he asked.

"Gold star for you, Goblin King," Sarah said. She kissed the tip of his chin. "Let's find out if she's the right one for the job."

* * *

"How many babies have you delivered?" Jareth asked, circling around Tee, sharklike.

"Six, personally. Two human, four from the Free People. I've assisted with eight other births. All alive-o and healthy, Elder. My luck is always good there."

"You will address me as Majesty, not by any pet names, young Tee." Jareth unclasped and unceremoniously upturned her bag. A few changes of clothing and personal items fell out. Jareth shook the bag suspiciously, and then there was a practical avalanche of items that made a formidable pile on the bed. Tee made a noise of outrage and started forward to retrieve her possessions, but Jareth's vicious glance and Sir Didymus's staff kept her back.

"Goodness," Sarah said. "It's like Mary Poppins."

"_Verdad_, that's where I got the idea," Tee muttered. She looked embarrassed and angry as Jareth stirred through the pile, picking things up and tossing them aside, Yimmil helping, thinking it was a game. "You're making a mess of my things," she complained.

"Yes," he said mildly. He reached for a wooden box and opened it. There was a selection of scalpels, forceps, and other wicked-looking obstetrical devices, all of which reminded Sarah of why she desperately needed someone with Tee's talents.

"You won't need these until the birth," he said in a tone that brooked no argument, handing it to the little goblin, who bore it off. Next he took up a small black case and opened it carefully. "Explain the purpose of this," he said, drawing out a wicked looking syringe.

"It's for injections," Tee said, nonplussed.

"I know it's for injections! What on Earth or Under were you planning on injecting my wife with?" He brandished the syringe like a weapon. He looked unstable and furious, and in Tee's place Sarah would have been daunted. But Tee was pert to answer.

"Vitamins, if she needs them. Antibiotics, if I need to give an episiotomy. Anesthetic, if she needs help with the pain." Jareth inspected several ampoules tethered in a neat elastic row and nodded, and put the syringe back, though he hesitated, as if he'd like to stab someone with it first.

He focused his intense eyes on the midwife and kept the case under his arm. "You'll get these back once you've injected yourself with each of these substances, in my presence. Except the morphia and your chirurugeon's knives. I'll keep _those_ until they're needed. They can kill." He looked at the rest of the pile with disdain. "Nothing else here is particularly suspicious or dangerous. You must have been confident of a warm reception, bringing all this clutter with you. You always were arrogant."

"Don't flirt," Sarah said with severity.

"I wasn't flirting!" Jareth said.

"Yelling at her. For you that counts as flirting."

"She has it coming," he said grimly. He picked up a small folding picture frame and opened it.

"That's mine," Tee snapped, and this time she ignored Sir Didymus and went to her things. She snatched the picture out of Jareth's hands and glared at him. "Don't touch that! It's mine!" She cradled the photos to her chest and stuffed her belongings back into her bag one-handed. "It's all I have," she said, more quietly. She kissed the photos before laying it carefully on top, and snapped the bag closed.

"No, no, young Tee," Jareth said cheerfully. "You have work now. Aren't you _lucky_?" Tee shrank.

"So she passes?" Sarah asked.

"Barely," Jareth said with disdain. "You may take her to your service if it pleases you. Tee, on your knees."

"No," she said, evading his eyes. "I have a few questions for Queen Sarah first."

"Make them snappy," Jareth said. "You're getting on my last nerve."

Sarah looked at Tee. _If I were in her position, and had anywhere else to go, I'd have been gone half-an-hour ago. She's afraid of him. Angry with him, but also afraid of him. I wonder… does she _have_ anywhere else to go? _"Ask away," Sarah said.

"It's really his baby?" Tee asked, looking only at Sarah. "Of his body? You're carrying a fae child? Truly?"

Sarah had the impulse to laugh, but Tee seemed so earnestly apprehensive. "Yes, yes, yes," she replied.

"The _Hidalgos_ don't breed with mortal men and women."

"This one has," Sarah said simply.

Tee looked at her a moment longer, huge green eyes made larger from speculative staring. She opened her mouth as if to contradict again, took in the severe look Sarah gave her, and closed it. She went down on her knees and crossed herself, then raised her head to Sarah.

"I'll make a vow to _you_, then, Queen Sarah. Take me into your household, for as long as seems right to you."

Sarah looked over at Jareth. "Can I?" she asked.

Jareth tapped his finger against his nose, considering. "This won't be like receiving the oaths you had from Sir Didymus or that giant walking carpet, or even what it might have been from Higgle—"

"—Hoggle"

"Huggermugger. Or even like any promises of help and aid that young Finnvarrah might have given. They love you. Young Shiprah does not. See her there, ready to let fly at me with a sharp word or a ready weapon? How she despises me." Jareth came up behind her and touched her cheek with his, voice warm and seductive. "See her eyes? Even now, she's holding back her anger, and she's doing it because you fascinate her. Our baby fascinates her. She will be dangerous. But she can be yours, Sarah, if you so wish. She's laid herself down at your feet. All you need do is pick up that strength and take it for your own."

Sarah trembled. She'd never properly understood the erotic potential of the Labyrinth's magic, though Jareth had attempted, often, to teach her. And she was never sure, later, whether Jareth had spoken his next words aloud or if he had whispered them directly into her mind.

_Take her and claim her. It will be your third great act, as Queen of the Labyrinth. The first, to bear my child. The second, to wake me to life. The third… to claim power over your subjects and break them to your will._

She felt the strength of his arousal pressing hard into her buttocks, and his hands around her waist became a caress. "Bend your neck and let her take your amulet in her hands," Jareth instructed. Sir Didymus got down on one knee and doffed his cap.

_My amulet? … my key_. Sarah loomed over the kneeling Tee, and realized how vulnerable this position made her, and was once again grateful for Jareth's steadying arms around her. _She could snap that key from around my neck and take it. If she took it, she would hurt me. It's not just trust from her. It's trust on my part, too_. She shivered as Jareth directed Tee to clasp her hands upon the key around her neck, in an attitude of prayer. She sandwiched Tee's hands and wrists between hers, remembering the feeling of holding Sir Didymus's prickly paws in her hands in just this way. But Jareth was right, this was different.

"Repeat after me," he murmured, low, in her ear. Sarah shuddered and said the words.

"Shiprah Serendipity, Tee, Miss Life, do you swear to be my good and trusty help, serving me and none other, making my friends your friends and your enemies my enemies, and being always comfortable to my will and pleasure…"

Sarah gasped. She felt the transmission of power, verdict, _mundeburdium_, like a flowing essence from her hands to Tee's body. Tee's was tenfold the strength of her sweet little knight, or Ludo's, sweet and juicy and full of life, a force she could suck out with as little difficulty as a juice-box. She could feel Jareth, too, as if he were under her skin, his palm pressed to the back of her head, pouring a flood of protection into and through her. She felt like a conduit for a vast golden force, godlike, and she knew that if Tee ever broke her vow, Sarah had the power to know it, and the power to punish her severely, even to kill her_. Addictive, this power_, she thought, and was ashamed at herself for enjoying it so much. She was so ashamed that she added seven extra words to the vow that would have enormous repercussions in the future…

"Until seven months and seven days pass."

She felt Jareth's arms tighten around her in surprise, and probably dismay. But Tee looked delighted. "I swear to all these things for all that time," she replied quickly, as if she were afraid Sarah or Jareth might try to make the duration more indefinite. And then, unbidden, and with a gratitude that threatened to bring tears to Sarah's eyes, Tee released the key and put a devout kiss on each of Sarah's hands before standing again.

"Hmph," Jareth said. "I suppose that will have to satisfy."

Sarah felt suddenly dizzy. Both Jareth and Tee reached out simultaneously to catch her before she could topple over. Room spinning, she saw their eyes meet, some sort of initial truce negotiated over her body.

* * *

Jareth had offered—demanded—that the midwife give Sarah a thorough checkup in his presence, but Sarah had put him off. She was too tired after the vow to even consider it, begging for a nap instead while Sir Didymus was sent off to make arrangements for her new vassal's livery and quarters. Tee had, surprisingly, offered Jareth an olive branch in the form of a short wooden tube with a flared lip.

"A Pinard horn. Maybe you'd like to hear the baby's heartbeat?" And she had Sarah sit down and shimmied her clothing out of the way, pressed the Pinard horn hard against Egg first in one direction and then another. She looked up at Sarah and gave that delighted and surprised smile again, the one that reached her lips, showed her pretty white teeth. "There it is," she had said, beckoning Jareth over.

"So loud," he said in wonder, on his knees before her. He looked up at her in worshipful delight. "So strong!" And Tee had carefully retreated into the background as he stroked her skin and kissed her before turning his ear back to the instrument again. "Can you hear it, Sarah?"

She had shook her head. He pressed her hand under his, holding the horn in place, and turned into an owl, brought his owl's ears to the instrument, strutted across her belly twice in possessive triumph, and then turned his head to the lip of the horn again, and chirped and warbled in a rapid oceanic rhythm. _That's what he hears_, Sarah had thought with wonder, scritching her free hand through his powder-soft feathers. _That's Egg. _Her heart leapt with utter delight.

That night, Jareth slept warm and safe beside her. They'd made delirious and perhaps inappropriate love together, but the tides of desire were too strong to be stopped by considerations of her rather large belly. She dreamed she was hip deep in that tide, that it was pulling at her thighs and at Egg. She dreamed it was ripping Egg slowly away from her, like a scab, like a tooth.

She woke with a start. Pain. She felt a pain gnawing slowly at Egg. The pain _was_ Egg. In terror she reached between her legs and felt her fingers come away wet, saw them smear darkness against her shift.

"Jareth!" Sarah said with a surge of panic. "Jareth, get the midwife. I'm bleeding!"

* * *

**Next… Chapter 7: "Strength"**

* * *

_Thanks to FrancesOsgood, acting midwife for this story and beta extraordinaire._

* * *

**Fanny**: You're in for a treat next chapter, then.

**Panda**: Finnvah loves Sarah intensely, yes. Maybe even more than he loves Jareth. This will cause complications. I feel like this shout-out should be as long as your delicious reviews, but it's not. Instead, I'll tell you that the moment with the little owl proudly strutting across Sarah's baby-bump is totally for you.

**Askeebe**: It's tricky to write an adult and sexualized and fully-formed adult character who appears in the film as a baby. Trying to avoid as much squick as possible; this Toby isn't a baby any more.

**Jetredgirl**: I know you like the Sareth action. Here's a chapter full of it.

**Zayide**: Finnvah loves Sarah for her own sake. It is wholesome and simple. His relationship to Jareth is neither wholesome nor simple.

**Jalen**: I'm loving your Labydrabbles! I don't know if I made any references to anything in this chapter, but if you see one, point it out? It was pretty exhausting to write.

**Whydancer**: Jareth is a special case because of his tempering/tampering with humanity. He's also the King of the Labyrinth. He could have probably gone the goo route, but it would have left a terrible wound in the kingdom. His idea was to get his replacement, his heir, to do him in and take his place. These are great questions, but I like to leave some of this stuff purposefully ambiguous and try to answer to it in the story (because I'm trying to figure these things out myself, too).

**brylcreem queen**: Miss them no more! This chapter is all Sarah and Jareth all the way… but maybe upsetting.

**comical freaka**: HOLY CRAP LADY! The Troll Market is an absolute and direct inspiration for the Goblin Market in this setting—I watched that scene about three times to get the right 'feel' for it. *high five*

**irgroomer**: If my best-laid plans go aright, he'll get his boo-boo (and other parts) kissed next chapter.

**Kat**: Thank you! So glad you're enjoying it!


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